Liberia Philanthropy Secretariat

"The Liberia Philanthropy Secretariat is the first office of its kind in the world. Housed in the Office of the President and funded by foundations; our unique model of government and foundation partnership has effectively expanded and coordinated philanthropic support to Liberia."

"The Liberia Philanthropy Secretariat holds an Annual Liberia Foundations Meeting each year in New York during the month of September. The meeting is designed to be a platform for information sharing and collaboration between Liberia’s foundation partners, the Government of Liberia and other key donors in the country. This meeting is also an excellent introduction to philanthropy in Liberia for prospective foundations and philanthropists that are exploring ways to support Liberia. The Foundations Meeting is typically co-hosted by one of LPS’s partners. In the past years our co-hosts have been Open Society Institute, The Ford Foundation, The NoVo Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation."

"The Government of Liberia (GoL) established the Liberia Philanthropy Secretariat in April 2009, with generous support from several philanthropic partners including the NoVo Foundation, Humanity United, the Daphne Foundation and the McCall McBain Foundation."

Background
"After 14 years of civil war, Liberia's democracy is just beginning to turn a new page, and a group of strategic international philanthropists are hoping to play a role in catalyzing precisely that process. Recently, at the start of the Global Philanthropy Forum in San Francisco, a number of key stakeholders of this initiative provided a progress report to an eagerly-interested audience. First, however, the seeds of this engagement trace back to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2008, where Pam Omidyar's Humanity United, the Global Philanthropy Forum, the Open Society Institute, the Daphne Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, McCall-MacBain, Trust Africa and the government of Liberia made a "commitment to action." This commitment formed the basis for a new kind of investing.

"Established in April 2009 within the Office of the President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf--Africa's first female elected Head of State--is Africa's first Philanthropy Secretariat, financed entirely by foundations and charged with aligning philanthropic investments with Liberia's Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS)...

"With an annual budget of about $200,000, the two-person secretariat is officially part of President Sirleaf's executive office and is overseen by Natty B. Davis, a senior adviser to the president. The secretariat is a bold new adventure for the world of post-conflict philanthropy, and has the potential to serve as a model for expediting the transitional process for countries seeking to lift themselves from a crisis-ridden past."

On February 25, 2010, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf hosted several high-profile international philanthropists and foundations in Monrovia.... "The twenty Philanthropists visiting Liberia include Dr. Wiebe Boer, an Associate Director with the Rockefeller Foundation's Africa Regional Office based in Nairobi, Kenya; David Cohn, a senior Research Scientist serving as the technical lead for Google Labs; Elliott Donnelley, II, Founder and Principal Managing Director, White Sand Investor Group, & Treasurer and Secretary of the Board of Directors, The Philanthropy Workshop West; Joan Platt, Founder and President, Joan & Lewis Platt Foundation; and Jane Wales, Co-Founder, Global Philanthropy Forum & President & CEO, World Affairs Council of Northern California, among others."

Contact
Web: http://www.supportliberia.com

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