About Us
Our History
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Liberia Perseverance Foundation was originally conceived by board member Lisa St. John, whose sense of duty towards Liberia began with her love for Obediah, an eight-year-old Liberian boy who lived with Lisa and her family while receiving medical treatment in the United States.
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Introduced to the Liberian Association of San Diego, Lisa discovered a passion for children in Liberia to have the opportunity to attain an education and for its women to have the means to support themselves.
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This dream started in 2018 and grew to become Liberia Perseverance Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
We believe all women and children can embrace who they are,
define their future, and change the world.
Our Mission
Our mission is to enable Liberia’s youth to attend and graduate from school, and to empower its impoverished women by providing business resources and training.
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The people we strive to help are those who are most vulnerable and living with multiple struggles. These challenges include forced sexual activity (which often results in teenage pregnancy), early marriage, sexual/gender-based violence and domestic work responsibilities. Many of these abuses occur as Liberian children work to complete elementary and secondary school.
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Many children drop out of school at an early age and struggle to find a productive role in society. We aim to enable school retention through peer mentorship programs that provide workshops on health education/hygiene management and small business skills training.
Our Current Project
We are currently working with Pastor Love W. Gibson (to whom Lisa was introduced via Obediah), founder of the Healthy Girls Clubs (HGC).
HGC provides guidance counselors to train and support at-risk adolescent girls between the ages of 14-18 years old. Training includes health education, hygiene management and business skills. The health education/hygiene management section provides the girls with sanitary pads and trains them on proper usage. This enables the girls to avoid using cloth, which leads to menstrual-hygiene-related infections and diseases. The counselors also address the shame and myth surrounding menstruation, help build the girls’ self-confidence and prepare them to participate in religious, educational, and social activities during their cycle. They also host workshops for friends and family members to foster support for the program.
The business skills section provides training to enable the girls to generate income for financial sustainability and self-empowerment. The girls are taught to bake bread, cookies and meat pies, sew clothes and uniforms for schools, create footwear with beads and fabric and make decorative items for the home such as tablecloths and paper flowers. Counselors then help the girls to start a small business. They are taught how to develop a business plan and provided with startup business kits (items to produce and sell). The end goal is for the girls to open a business account, market the items produced and save money.
Our Board
Shahpar Ostovar
Born in Iran, Shahpar left her birth country in 1980 to raise her two young boys in Italy. While there she worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. During those years, she became familiar with many cultures and ethnicities, which served to enrich her life experiences and enabled her to better understand the importance of differing cultural values and beliefs.
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Shahpar speaks five languages, which has caused her friends to refer to her as “The Internationally Spirited”. Shahpar has been involved in Women’s Empowerment International, a group of visionary women whose goal is to assist desperately poor women living in underserved rural communities with tools to improve their lives. She has also participated in Women for Women International, an organization that has helped more than 500,000 marginalized women in countries affected by war and conflict.
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Lisa St. John
Lisa was born and raised in San Diego, California, and now resides in the small beach community of Del Mar, just a few miles north of her childhood home. Her love for Liberia was born when she and her family brought an eight-year-old Liberian boy, Obediah, into their home for seven months while he underwent treatment for a medical condition. Their lives were forever changed by Obediah, and the family has since made numerous life-long friends within the local Liberian-American community.
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Lisa is retired and lives with her husband and a myriad of pets, including Bradley the pig. Due to Covid-19 their household also currently includes two adult sons and, on occasion, a friend’s adult daughter. Prior to her retirement, Lisa worked as the Director of Administration for an international law firm for over 20 years. She was also the founder and principal of Operations Ninja, where she provided virtual support to executives to strengthen business and advance the industry community.
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