Educate and Empower Children in 6 Rural Villages

Thank you to everybody who has supported our students in Sierra Leone. Our school year has been going very well and we are seeing much progress being made in our six rural villages where we are operating schools - not only in education, but also in the development of the surrounding community and economy. Below is an update from our President, Samuel Sesay, and one of our Board Members, Jeff Gingrich, as Jeff has just come back from a short trip to visit our schools and communities in Sierra Leone. The update here is focused on one of our villages, Rokassa, where we are seeing increasing development and sustainability stemming from the presence of EduNations schools and partnerships in the community. This is all made possible by your giving and we are incredibly thankful. 

The following is an update from Jeff Gingrich and Samuel Sesay:

Updates from the Schools

All our schools reopened in September as staff and students returned quite prepared for the new school year. The GlobalGiving Campaign provided funding for the essential school supplies of teaching and materials in our schools. Thank you again for all those who helped to support that project. In addition, though we do not have a building, we have begun teaching the first year of Junior Secondary School (JSS) to approximately 25 students in Rokassa who have completed primary school. We are currently drawing up plans for construction of a JSS and hope to start a capital campaign for that soon. This will then complete providing education through JSS in all the communities where EduNations operates schools. Ultimately, we hope to construct a senior secondary school with housing for students in Rokassa where children from the other villages could continue their studies. We are satisfied with the determination and commitment by both staff and students towards achieving the goals of this school year.

The Pa Santigie Rokassa Garden

In keeping with a goal of achieving financial sustainability, we accepted an offer to manage a 40-acre garden owned by the village chief Pa Santigie Kamara. He is personally getting too old to continue the strenuous physical work himself but is willing and able to oversee younger workers. The garden grows palm oil, pineapples, kola nuts, tola nuts, some cashew and orange trees, but had become somewhat overgrown in the last few years since he has been unable to keep it up on his own. We had hoped that we could manage the garden for at least one year investing our resources there and expect to generate an income that will support our school and clinic operations in Rokassa. After 10 months of operations, startup costs and salaries for the 4 full time and 30 part time jobs this has created, revenue is almost even with the expenses. The good news is that some 2,500 pineapple suckers have been planted in an extension of the garden which will more than quadruple production over 2 years. We are considering steps in re-placing some of the older palm oil trees, planting additional pineapple and cashew trees to increase the likelihood of achieving our objective to create sustainable jobs and to generate local funds to support our school and clinic operations in the coming years.

In the spirit of Sierra Leone, we say TENKI! (thank you!)

Links:

• EduNations Website