Character and Virtue Formation among Liberian Youth

From 1980 to 1997 and again from 1999 to 2003, the West African country of Liberia was engaged in two brutal civil wars. These vicious wars saw the country’s gross domestic product decline by 90 percent, its electrical grid devastated, and 95 percent of the country’s healthcare facilities destroyed (The Economist, 2017; World Bank Group, 2011). Slowly emerging from the devastation of two civil wars, the country was poorly equipped to handle the Ebola outbreak, which struck Liberia in 2014 (Centers for Disease Control, 2014). It was described by the World Health Organization (2014) as “the most severe acute public health emergency seen in modern times.”

Recognizing the extreme challenges confronting Liberian youth and the general breakdown of institutions that historically have supported the healthy development of Liberia’s young citizens (e.g., families, schools, churches), L.A.C.E.S. (Life and Change Experienced through Sport) was established in the country in 2007. L.A.C.E.S. is a grassroots, Christ-centered, mentoring program that uses sports as a medium for fostering character and virtue development among Liberian youth. L.A.C.E.S. has demonstrated success cultivating virtues (e.g. Bronk et al., 2019), but the organization wants to ensure it is cultivating the virtues that are most strongly associated with thriving in the Liberian culture.

In collaboration with researchers at Ball State University and Claremont Graduate University, using in-depth clinical-style interviews, the proposed study seeks to gain a fuller understanding of what positive youth development in the Liberian context entails, which virtues Liberian adults believe their youth need to possess to thrive, and how these virtues can most effectively be cultivated. L.A.C.E.S. will use this information to revise its curriculum to ensure it is cultivating culturally-valued virtues, and the larger process will serve as a roadmap for cultivating character among other majority world youth.

Project Leads: Kendall Cotton Bronk and Rebecca Donaldson (Email)
Funder: Templeton World Charity Foundation