The Liberia Media for Democratic Initiatives (LMDI), Liberia’s leading media and community outreach blended People To People public education civil society organization has begun its annual tour of the South Eastern region of Liberia usually meant to roll several national public education and engagement with the people in the region on policy and development issues.

LMDI director John Kollie said on Monday that this year’s tour of the rather difficult to travel region because of the known attending bad road and distance by his organization will entail the rollout of the USAID funded LMDI implemented ongoing national media and community outreach blended public education and visibility on the current change of the old banknotes and coins to a new family of them through direct People to People forums under the group’s flagship platform named and styled THE DIALOGUE.

The other reason for this year’s tour of the Southeastern region of Liberia is to conduct the region’s Year Four and Five qualifying rounds of the National Academic Challenge Competitions of the Liberia Media for Democratic Initiatives (LMDI) for all five counties of the region and Rivercess County to the deep Eastern horn of Liberia. The tour began on Monday with the conduct of the latest session of THE DIALOGUE on the Central Bank of Liberia printing and minting and infusion of Liberia’s new family of banknotes at Yarpah Town, the second largest town in Rivercess County held at the Yarpah Town Market place on Monday, the people of Yarpah town overwhelmingly called on the Government through the Central Bank of Liberia to fast track the infusion of lower denominations of the new family of banknotes, alarming that mutilated banknotes, especially the lower denominations have become embarrassing and unbearably burdensome for them.

They spoke of the apparent disappearance of the lower denominations of five and 10 dollars of the current family of banknotes and urged the CBL to consider minting coins for the lower denominations of the new family being printed, minted, and infused into the Liberian market and economy. The second sitting of THE DIALOGUE on the CBL currency change will happen at the Cestos city, the political seat of River Cess County today Tuesday, beginning at 10:00 am at the Cestos City Hall downtown Cestos. For the LMDI set of national academic challenge competitions regional qualifying rounds, the two high schools of Rivercess County, namely the Cestos and Yarpah Town High Schools will compete beginning at 11: 30am today for the county’s only seat in the LMDI-NACC’s county and regional qualifying rounds.

This year’s qualifying rounds are featuring questions from the Central Bank of Liberia Currency Regime Change and the ongoing printing, minting, and infusion of a new family of banknotes to buttress the ongoing public visibility drive being rolled out by the LMDI with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Following the conduct of the second and last Rivercess session of the CBL DIALOGUE/Public Forum, the team will immediately head to Sinoe County in the far eastern horn of the South East of Liberia for similar activities.

This year’s tour of the South East of Liberia is for 14 days or two weeks. Please follow all our activities in the coming weeks through our partner network of national and rural community radios across the nation. You may follow the LMDI at our website at www.lmdi.org and also visit our Facebook pages at LMDI-The Dialogue/Ducor Debates. You can send comments to info@lmdi.org and john@lmdi.org Our flagship platform, THE DIALOGUE, at this time, is in general association and partnership, and with the Central Bank of Liberia the USAID Liberia Economic Policy Dialogue Activity (LEPDA).