Dorothy Toomann Confident of DEN-L’s Future

-Says She Left Behind Good Legacy

By Esau J. Farr

The immediate former Executive Director of the Development Education Network-Liberia (DEN-L) Madam Dorothy Toomann has expressed confidence in the current leadership of the entity.

Madam Toomann said she is confident that the current leadership of DEN-L under the administration of Joseph Kesselley, the new Executive Director of the institution is capable of living up to the dream, aspiration as well as the goal and objectives of the entity.

“I am confident and have trust in the current leadership and staff of DEN-L under the leadership of my successor and the staff that the future of the entity is bright,” Madam Toomann said.

She made clear her confidence in the staff of DEN-L recently in Bong County in an interview with the New Republic Newspaper.

She then used the opportunity and recounted her experience entering DEN-L as a mere high school graduate who later rose to the top post of the institution.

“I entered DEN-L as a high school graduate, we later worked and established the gender unit at the entity with the help of other partners of DEN-L like UN Women and by and large I subsequently became the Executive Director of DEN-L,” Madam Toomann told this paper.

Madam Toomann said due to the closed and cordial working relationship she had with staff of the entity she was called to serve as advisor and consultant to the institution for progress a position she has since accepted and currently occupies.

Madam Toomann who was full of praise for her former co-workers identified lack of funding and donor roll-out plans at the time she took over as some of the major challenges she encountered, but said the grace of God carried them through.

“When I took over as head of the institution some of the greatest challenges, we as an institution faced were donor fatigue. There was no funding to run projects and even pay staffs where I was forced to consult others on the way forward and I tell you what; I was told the only way out was to down-size staffs a difficult moment in the history of DEN-L. But when I consulted my staffs, they told me not to downsize, but that we should all work together and that they were willing to volunteer for the success of the entity,” she explained.

The former DEN-L boss narrated that the entity quickly engaged in agricultural activities for self-sustainability something that kept them till they got green light from donors through project proposals written by staffs of the entity.

She disclosed that staffs volunteered for about seven months and at the end of the volunteering period contracts began to pour on the entity and since then DEN-L has stood the test of time and its is sustainable.