Newsletters

EducAid periodically sends out a newsletter to let you know about current events related to the schools and general situation in Sierra Leone. These newsletters have been provided as MS Word documents and now PDF documents (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required). Click on any of the links below to download the newsletter.

September-October 2008 (pdf doc)
June 2008 (pdf doc)
February 2008 (pdf doc)
October 2007 (pdf doc)
June 2007 (pdf doc)
March 2007 (pdf doc)
November 2006 (pdf doc)
July 2006 (pdf doc)
November 2005 (pdf doc)
April 2005 (pdf doc)
November 2004 (Word doc)
March 2004 (Word doc)
October 2003 (Word doc)
September 2002 (HTML)
April 2002 (HTML)
November 2001 (HTML)
April 2001 (HTML)

Current Events

Women’s Project

When women are not educated, it is unusual to see a country’s poverty statistics improve. Over the years we have been all too aware of our own weakness in this area. Despite all previous efforts, we struggled to get more than over 20% female pupils in the Lumley School and 10% was pushing things in the up-country schools. In Sierra Leone many girls struggle to have anything close to equal access to education in comparison to their male counterparts.

In the mornings, the female staff conduct literacy and numeracy classes as well as health education and gender equality sessions. In the afternoons they go around the local area house to house, looking for more girls who want to get back to school.

Every two weeks the girls have the opportunity for promotion into the mainstream school and, as soon as they are doing well enough, they move up.

We started with 18 girls in March 2007; we now have around 100, with over 50 promoted into the main school. This format has proved extremely successful in terms of getting girls into the main school. They emerge with real confidence and are able to hold their own.

In September 2007 two ex-EducAidian students started the Rolal Women’s Project and quite quickly had around 40 girls in their class.

The latest development is that two more ex-EducAidians have just started the Magbeni Women’s Project.

 

Community Service

The reason EducAid is working on education is because we believe it is key to poverty reduction. However, the education of individuals only reduces the poverty of the individual. We aspire to greater things.

EducAid aims to empower individuals through giving them access to the education that tells them about their rights, but, at the same time, enables them to be clear about their responsibilities.

To facilitate this, in 2007–08 we introduced a programme of community service. No student will be allowed to receive their public exam results unless they have completed a period of community service and has the certificate to prove it.

There is no great tradition of voluntary service in Sierra Leone, but the students have responded fantastically well. They serve proudly, cleaning in hospitals, teaching in our own or nearby primary schools, working on the EducAid farms and so on. They are proud of themselves and the way the community receives them, and we are truly encouraged that maybe these youngsters can be seeds for a new generation, one with a willingness to serve others, bringing potential change and development one step at a time.

 

Volunteer Junior Staff

As a continuation of this ‘community spirit’, EducAid has found that many of its students really do want to put something back when they finish their own education.

The Rolal and Magbeni Women’s Projects are staffed by young women who having graduated from the Senior Secondary School in Lumley. They were willing to go and reach out to other young girls less fortunate than themselves. A total of 9 volunteer staff work on the programme in the different schools.

In the past this has been a platform which has enabled some of EducAid’s generous supporters to identify students for sponsorship at tertiary level. In general the costs involved in going on to university or college would put such an exercise completely out of the reach of the sort of youngsters who attend EducAid schools. However, through the generosity of a number of donors, we now have a dozen ex-EducAidians training as teachers, accountants, engineers and doctors in the country’s tertiary institutions.

We hope that it will be possible to find sponsors in the future for the excellent volunteers who are currently serving in the schools. The level of commitment and maturity they display is quite humbling at times. The fact that they have been willing to serve gives us confidence that, although there are great needs in Sierra Leone, there are reasons to choose to help these young people over others who show less concern for those less fortunate than themselves.

 

Maronka

Maronka, a 3-house village 3 miles from Rolal, is the site for our tiny primary school. Maronka’s chief, Obai Santigie, raises any child who arrives in his village as his own and is proud as punch at the presence of the school in his village.

Every now and then, a child below secondary school age lands on our doorstep. Maronka has started solving the problem that this presents. Any child in need is made welcome and seen as a blessing.

This year EducAid officially took the Maronka primary school under its wing and we are delighted to be working in cooperation with a village with genuine community spirit.

Fatmata Bangura left her home in Freetown and settled in this tiny place in order to run the school 4 years ago. Today she runs the school with one EducAid junior staff volunteer and a regular turnover of students from Rolal and Lumley undertaking their community service. Over 50 children who would otherwise fail to access education now get a strong foundation, are fed every day and get medicine when they need it.

The biggest problem in Maronka continues to be the drinking water – we hope it will not be too long before we can access funding to dig a well.