By Signe Roelsgaard | Development Associate
In a survey conducted by AdvocAid in 2014, more than a third of the female inmates in Sierra Leone stated that they had never been to school, whilst 83% of them earned less than US$22 a month. This extreme mix of poverty and lack of education can be very toxic and contribute to women ending up in conflict with the law. AdvocAid provides literacy and numeracy classes for female inmates to break the cycle of illiteracy. Last week the new term started for the female inmates in Makeni.
Fridays and Saturdays are new school days in the women’s wing of the Makeni Correctional Centre, where 13 female inmates are currently learning how to read, write and do basic math. The women are divided into three classes based on their educational level – six in Stage 1, four in Stage 2 and three in Stage 4. The classes are taught by a teacher from EducAid Sierra Leone.
In a country where the mean years of schooling for women only is 2.2 compared to the slightly higher 4 years for men (see UNDP’s Human Development Index in 2015), even basic education can be a powerful tool to successful reintegration of female inmates.
Education programmes in prison have been proven to greatly impact the future prospects of detainees and their families and dramatically reduce recidivism among released inmates as they have greater chances of earning a living. Lack of meaningful activities during incarceration, on the other hand, is harmful for their mental health (WHO). AdvocAid’s literacy and numeracy classes in other words empower female inmates to cope with the stress of incarceration and help them become self-reliant upon release.
Book donation in to male inmates – AdvocAid works primarily with women and girls, but few people know that we are also running a prison library in Freetown’s male correctional centre on Pademba Road. In January, AdvocAid and Practical Tools Initiative delivered a generous book donation from Book Aid International to the inmates there.
Following the book donation, interest from inmates and corrections officers has increased dramatically, and 50 users are now accessing the library daily compared to less than 20 per day before. As one inmate said: “It has provided me solace in this confinement and this is why I am here in the morning as soon as we are released from the block.”
Help us continue to provide literacy classes across Sierra Leone – As we wrote in the last report on our anniversary project, we had to put the literacy and numeracy classes temporarily on hold in the last quarter of 2016 due to funding constraints. We are therefore thrilled to have resumed classes in Makeni, and soon we will be able to do the same in Freetown and Kenema. However, we still need support to ensure that the classes can continue throughout the year. Just $45 is enough to provide education for five women for a month, but any donation will make a difference. Thank you in advance for your support!
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