RMC Alumna Aims to Boost Literacy in Liberia Through Project for Peace Library

This article was originally published by Randolph-Macon College.

The first time Calvina Birch ’24 stepped foot in Liberia—her father’s home country—she was there to make a difference. Through a $10,000 Project for Peace grant, Birch spent the summer after her graduation helping create a library at Leap of Faith Academy, an elementary school in Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia.

Projects for Peace is a global program that encourages young adults to develop innovative, community-centered, and scalable responses to the world’s most pressing issues. Along the way, these student leaders increase their knowledge, improve skills, and establish identities as peacebuilders and changemakers. This year, the initiative selected 126 student projects, including Birch’s.

Birch was inspired to do something for her father’s West African homeland. A psychology major at RMC, she had traveled to Africa in 2023 with biology professor Ray Schmidt to conduct research. She knew that Liberia has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. Her hope was to provide young Liberians with the tools for the same quality education she had in the United States, and the crucial building block for that kind of education—the ability to read.

“Reading is a form of education that positively influences and changes society,” Birch says in her personal statement in the project’s official report.

With the idea to build a library, she worked with her father to find a partner school in Liberia. He connected her with Gaius Rainsbury, the principal of Leap of Faith Academy. From there, she applied for the grant and once the funding was secured, she got to work on the logistics.

Here in Virginia, she collaborated with the Virginia Church Library Association and the River City Faith Network to organize book drives to fill the shelves of the library in Monrovia. She raised additional funds and collected more donations by conducting a bake sale fundraiser on campus through CKI (Circle K International, a student community service and leadership development organization) and presenting the project at the Black Excellence Showcase in the spring.

Birch graduated from RMC in the spring of 2024 with a major in psychology and minors in behavioral neuroscience and biology. In late July, she traveled to Monrovia to witness the renovation of Leap of Faith Academy that she set in motion. While on the ground, she shopped for all the supplies a library needs beyond books (laptops, printers, stationery, etc.) and periodically checked in on the progress of construction happening at the school. She also used grant funds to secure internet access for the library’s first six months.

Once the physical space for the library had been renovated, Birch joined leaders and constituents of Gracie A. Reeves Baptist Church, the organization that runs Leap of Faith Academy, for an opening ceremony. Before Birch’s efforts, the school had never had a library or even computers before.

Though the books had not arrived for the library before Birch had to return to the U.S. (they have since arrived and stocked the library), she met with the school’s grateful students and held a training session for volunteers to learn how to operate the equipment and properly catalog the library’s books.

“It feels very fulfilling seeing it complete,” Birch reflected. “I feel like I accomplished something, and I feel like I definitely made some kind of change. Even though it’s not significantly large, at least we’re starting from somewhere.”

Birch hopes that her project can inspire the school community to sustain the library and ensure its students unlock the power of reading; and more broadly, hopes that she can inspire others to invest in education in Liberia.

Meanwhile, she is investing in her own education. She’s currently enrolled in the VCU School of Medicine’s Post-Baccalaureate program with plans to apply for med school upon completion.