Every year or so, EducAid organises a big sponsored bike ride.  It is generally fairly challenging, great fun and most importantly enormously rewarding because it can raise a good sum of money for us on our core activities: running schools, feeding children and training and paying teachers and so on. We are really excited about…

Irena Przybyl, an old school friend of Miriam’s, went out to visit Sierra Leone and worked with groups of children to take photos of their world to enable them to tell their own stories in their own way. Irena has worked for months since on collating and editing and organising.  She has raised the money…

STG and Wahid, two very impressive young men – amazing overcomers who are determined to be part of a new and reformed Sierra Leone A few years ago, we had a trio of bright lads who did everything together and appeared to be really pushing to the top as fast as they could go.  They…

The war is surely not over but we have just won a minor victory. After 1 week of battling with the family we have finally managed to secure the safety of one of our girls: victim of an attempted rape assault.  How extraordinary to find the father of the girl trying to do a deal…

Patrick Horn is a regular visitor to and supporter of EducAid.  He was with us at the end of last year and here is his write up in his own words in the Parbold Church newsletter: I spent three and a half weeks living in three of the EducAid Schools in Sierra Leone during October…

Dr Rebecca Horn has been visiting and supporting EducAid for many years, the last time being in summer 2013 when she came to work with a team of staff and students to set up our Monitoring and Evaluation systems.  When I say summer, I do mean deep rainy season August of course, though! This time,…

So…. In 2012 when the last round of public senior secondary exams were allowed to take place, only 10% of the candidates countrywide passed.  Worrying!  Very worrying!  Very worrying for all concerned.  The minister’s solution?  He cancelled the 2013 round of exams and decided that all candidates must undertake a 4th year of Senior Secondary…

Saidu, always known as HipHop, for his easy ways and lack of fuss about anything – the little one who could sleep balanced on a bench or curled in a corner – had the most beautiful smile and was the sort of child everyone just wanted to take home with them; everyone except his family…

2013 had some very hard things happen.  We have lost a number of students.  Their young lives were cut short before time and their families have lost the hope that they brought to them and we have lost their gifts from our midst too.  They have gone and we are left.  Let the light that…

Last week we were celebrating Magbeni’s fantastic achievement in the recent public exams.  This week we are in mourning.  Kadija (17) and Aminata (16) were playing in the river while doing their laundry and were caught by the currents.  Jumping from a nearby boat and playing in a river they have known since they were…

Once again, all EducAid’s Junior Secondary Schools had 100% pass rates in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). Countrywide, the standards are consistently closer to 40% pass rates.  With some of the poorest and most vulnerable young people in the country, EducAid achieves very very different results. Magbeni came top of the EducAid stakes and…

Widad Worneh, new Coordinator for Pastoral Care and Behaviour Management, is getting stuck into her role.  A key part of EducAid’s positive behaviour management strategy is the peer mediator system.  Students are trained on each site to mediate in situations where students have got themselves in trouble. The training focuses on listening skills, empathy, being…

Another full on day in EducAid, with its great ups and terrible downs.  Today we have heard that Jimiyke Koroma has completed his anti-TB treatment and one very lucky young man has come through after being very close to death with TB throughout his brain and body.  On the same day, we have heard that, completely out…

Modupe Taylor-Pearce inspiring the young EducAidians So many good things happening that there is no time to blog about them! On 12th October, 2013, the EducAid past pupils held their first EducAidian Professionals Conference. Emmanuel Gaima leading the conferencein drawing up the Charter The event was organised by Haja Gbla, Fatmata Romalieu Barrie, Yahyah Kamara…

Standard practice across all sorts of projects, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is the bane of many project workers lives.  In large part, this is because the dreaded logical framework (logframe) ends up dictating what has to be done, so activities are undertaken because they will satisfy the needs of the M&E strategy rather than because…

Transparency International published their statistics on bribery, this week:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23231318 Sierra Leone is head of the league once more.  And this time it is for the highest percentage of the population that has paid bribes for goods and services.  In Sierra Leone 84% of the population has paid a bribe in the last year. When discussing…

What a great weekend…… Small group work – thinking through our dreams for the future of EducAid It was the second women’s weekend, with all the EducAid female staff talking over their progress during the last month, putting together their ideas about how they would hope EducAid will develop over the next 1, 5 and…

Haja and another teaching colleague EducAid has been contracted for several years to provide literacy and numeracy classes for the female inmates of four prisons.   Haja, one of our young past pupils, teaches in the Women’s Project, bringing dropout girls back into education.  She is also part of the EducAid AdvocAid team.  She is…

In their own words: We met playing hockey for the same team in our local town.  We have been talking about it for a while and have finally booked it, Bev is the more adventurous one of the two of us as she has already climbed Machu Picchu. We both went travelling through different parts…