UK AID MATCH: SUPPORTING 55,000 CHILDREN TO ACCESS EDUCATION ACROSS SIERRA LEONE

Over the three winters of 2017-2019, Street Child ran three UK Aid Match appeals which our wonderful supporters and the UK government got behind, allowing us to launch three brilliant programmes across Sierra Leone to support 55,000 children to access education (‘Right to Learn’ - Eastern Province; ‘Count Me In’ – Northern Province; ‘Mind The Gap’ – Southern Province).

Despite the significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the six months of COVID-19 induced school closures in 2020, both ‘Right to Learn’ and ‘Count Me In’ continued to reach the most vulnerable and marginalised children across the Northern and Eastern provinces and make significant progress. Moreover, both programmes also pivoted in March 2020 to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Since the programme’s inceptions in 2018 and 2019 respectively, the two UK Aid funded programmes have to date:

• Supported over 5,000 vulnerable children and adolescents, including 576 teenage mothers and 233 children living with disabilities, with social and livelihoods support enabling them to enrol into basic education.

• Supported over 16,000 children to enrol into basic primary education across 80 remote rural primary schools.

• Renovated or constructed 91 classrooms which have all have been resourced with learning and teaching materials, including textbooks, exercise books, chalk and markers.

• Trained 240 teachers from these schools in Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), a method used to rapidly improve numeracy and literacy.

• Established 60 income-generating initiatives to ensure a sustainable source of income to support the upkeep of these schools and pay teacher salaries.

• Enrolled 3,755 caregivers on Street Child’s award-winning ‘Family Business for Education’ (FBE) initiative, which through business start-up grant and training and mentoring from our business officers, enables the families to make weekly savings which are used to support their children’s education.

In October of last year, schools were able to reopen after six months of COVID-19 induced closure, allowing our ‘Mind The Gap’ project in the Southern Province to begin. Since the programme launch, we have identified 2,000 children, 998 boys and 1,002 girls, who will be supported to enrol and remain in education. 80 rural schools have also been identified and plans are in place to support 46 of them this year with construction or renovation. Last month, vulnerability assessments also took place identifying families who will be enrolled on FBE in the coming months.

Despite COVID-19 induced school closures, restrictions on movement and curfews, of which the latter has only recently been lifted, all these programmes have continued without too many delays and challenges, a testament to our collaborative way of working with local communities, the government and other key stakeholders. Over the coming months, the teams across the three programmes will continue to support a further 5,572 children. 4,500 families will receive family business grants and training as part of FBE and 479 teachers will be trained on TaRL methodology and receive teaching and learning materials. 56 further schools will also be renovated or constructed improving learning environments for thousands of more children in remote rural communities. 

In 2021 we will be able to support over 10,500 children to enrol and stay in junior secondary and improve the quality of teaching and learning environments in 160 rural schools across the three UK Aid supported programmes. Without these programmes, many of these children would be out of school or at risk of dropping out, never attaining their basic education.

Street Child UK and Street Child of Sierra Leone would like to express our enormous gratitude to everyone who supported these three flagship Winter appeals and in particular to the UK government for matching all donations. Together, we are impacting the lives, and futures, of 55,000 children.