“My Body Is Not on the Menu” Four Adolescent Girls Rewrite Their Future in New Kru Town

A young woman enters the hospitality classroom at the Centre for Adolescents in New Kru Town amidst a roar of excitement. She looks like a star returning home with her radiant smile and confident stride, instantly lighting up the room. Cheers erupt from the students: “Leticia!” Her former teacher, busy explaining how to welcome guests, turns around to embrace her warmly, and the class gathers around, inspired by the young woman who once sat where they now sit.

Leticia is a proud graduate of the Let Us Learn (LUL) programme in New Kru Town, a UNICEF-supported initiative that equips vulnerable youth with life skills and vocational training. Before starting the programme, Leticia lived in an abusive household. “We were used for money. My aunt did not pay for school. If we refused what the men wanted, we were beaten”. At just 14 years old, Leticia was already exposed to violence, exploitation and experienced an unwanted pregnancy.

“I felt stuck,” she says.

Adolescent stories likeLeticia’s are not unique. Social worker Rachel tells us how violence and exploitation are common around New Kru Town, a community known to have harsh living conditions. “Many children are self-reared. At ages six or seven, they are already working. Between 10-12, they are getting into crime and substance abuse or even conflicts with the law. Girls turn to the street and become commercial sex workers.”

Half of the adolescents enrolled in the LUL programme are teenage mothers.

The community's reputation, offering a life with no control, attracts young people from all over Montserrado County. “They want freedom from rules and end up findingviolence, prostitution and crime. Once they get here, they quickly adapt,” she explains.

“If we sit there and think that they will take it upon themselves to change their life, it won’t happen”.

Programmes like the Let Us Learn with support from UNICEF are giving young boys and girls an opportunity to build their trade and vocational skills, so that they make better choices about their futures- ones they can be proud of.

For Leticia, things started to change when she met a counsellor at the centre. With guidance and a grant, she pushed back against her exploiters and started a small business. After moving out on her own, she joined the life skills programme.

“They (the LUL programme) gave us an opportunity, and real support, including food and transportation. They took us seriously.”

Students like Leticia were motivated when interacting withsupportive adults while acquiring new skills. From a social aspect, it's where friendships were built to hold one another accountable and focused.

As Leticia sits beside her friend Grace, she recalls the most difficult moments of her adolescence.

Grace lived with her grandmother, who sold coal and was rarely home. After school, she would follow friends to the streets. They said it would be fun.

“On the street, I saw nothing I liked. I saw prostitution, drinking, and smoking.”

She soon started taking substances, drinking alcohol and eating poorly. “It was killing me slowly.”

Grace was sent home from the programme three times. “They said I was not in the best shape.” But I did not give up.” On her third try, one of the programme's social workers saw her determination. “She is serious. We can have her.”

For adolescents at LUL, Counselling is the cornerstone to them building their confidence, facing theirdecisions and charting a way forward in a comfortable environment.

Like an emergency room, it stabilizes the emotions before we start treating the deeply rooted problems. Social worker Rachel explains:

“Adolescents arrive with fear, trauma, and no emotional support. But even then, when they come here, they may not want to be here; they have a hard time focusing, and they want to escape. They have disturbing behaviours, so we are patient. It may take up to a year to go through the programme”.She adds how she often reaches into her own personal experiences to connect with them.

The programme runs in stages: counselling before life-skills, then vocational skills ahead of a three-month internship. If they perform well,they’re hired.

Today, 375 adolescents are enrolled, and thousands have been empowered in this community and across Liberia with the extension of the programme to Margibi and Grand Bassa Counties.

The centre is now in a brand-new, welcoming location to provide refuge and the safe space adolescents need. It has expanded the number of classes available to provide marketable skills and attract more boys.

“The girls come more easily. The boys are harder – they’re deep into crime. Explains Social Worker Rachel.

In the nearby plumbing shed, is Alexander, Benjamin, Esther & Esther – both former sex workers and teenage mothers. Their friendship is a lifeline. “She helped me gain confidence to share my thoughts,” Esther says.

Beyond the training and counselling, it’s perhaps these relationships, the camaraderie and the peer support that make the programme truly transformative.

Grace now works as a housekeeper at an expat compound and earns enough to support herself and her mother, who joined her from Nimba County. “If it wasn’t for the programme, I don’t think I’d be here today” glancing at Leticia, she adds, “She is my best friend. We call each other often; we tell each other to be strong.”

Today, Leticia works at a popular club in Monrovia, where she was recently promoted to a cashier. “When I was waitressing one evening, a man offered me $150 for the night. I remembered my teacher’s words when he talked about the downside of the jobs in hospitality: ‘Know your worth.’ And I thought of Grace, too, who always tells me to be strong. So, I said to him: “My body is not on the menu.”

Her courage did not go unnoticed. Management praised her integrity and asked where she had trained. “I told them I didn’t come from a trade school. I came from a vocational programme in the slums”. Impressed, they promoted her.

Leticia lives independently, earns a stable income, and mentor’s others. For many of Liberia’s youth, Let Us Learn is more than just a programme. It’s a launchpad for dreams, where hope is restored, dignity reclaimed, and futures rewritten one adolescent at a time.

As Leticia and Grace leave the centre together, Leticia’s words to the community’s adolescents linger:

“The life you are living out there is not the life you want to live. I know it does not define you.”