We are targeting $13,000 to send 100 Out-Of-School Vulnerable Children into Community Based Schools in the Falaba district.

• $10 will provide a vulnerable child pair of school shoes for one academic year
• $20 will provide a child school bag for more than one academic year
• $25 will provide a vulnerable child dozen exercise books, a pen and a geometry set.
• $50 will provide a child pair of school uniforms for more than one academic year.
• $100 will provide media engagement (radio program) cost to foster education awareness.
• $120 will provide community engagement cost to foster education awareness

What is the problem or need we are seeking to solve?

Children may be “at risk” of not being in school due to their geographic location, gender, religion and present situation including those from marginalized, large, polygamous families. A child’s family status and/or living situation greatly determine his or her vulnerability

The lack of awareness in especially rural communities in Sierra Leone on the importance of education and poverty coupled with gender, long distances to schools, families holding onto their cultural and traditional beliefs, marginalizing certain minority ethnic groups, discrimination, and physical appearance to name but few are making things more impossible for the majority of the children in this region to access quality education.

According to the OCHA-relief web, Poverty was ranked by all study participants, both young and old, as the primary reason why primary school-aged children were out of school. Presently, Sierra Leone remains at the bottom of the Human Development Index (177/177). The average poor household spends 37% below the amount required to meet their basic needs. Families slipping into dire poverty urgently require the assistance of children to supplement the family income. For most marginalized families, it is a choice between putting food on the table and sending a child to school.

Extreme poverty in many rural communities has seen young children trafficked to cities and other urban areas with parental consent. Families are lured into the false belief that their children will eventually be sent to school, and have brighter prospects and access to better education opportunities than in the provinces. Internally trafficked children end up working as child laborers, the majority of which are involved in petty trading, fishing, mining and other forms of hazardous work.

Fifty-four per cent of children who are out of school are living with either extended family members or caretakers. Findings show that children working away from their families are constantly exposed to verbal, physical and/or sexual abuse, neglect and exploitation.

What are we going to do to solve it?

By 2027, we want to see that 4,000 Out-Of-School vulnerable children have been enrolled in Community-Based Schools with sustainable and full access to uninterrupted quality education especially academic materials such as school uniforms, school bags, shoes, books, pens and other school charges (enrollment and condiment fees).

YoMSuD-SL’s uninterrupted quality education program includes community engagement and sensitization on the importance of education to foster parents’ awareness, recruitment and enrollment of Out-Of-School vulnerable children into Community Based Schools, provision of academic support, mentorship and counseling support programs, computer literacy and other related vocational training to prepare the children to become responsible adults in the future, supporting them to be more innovative thereby making them less susceptible to the influence of others within their communities.

We will form a community Education Task Force group in every targeted community for the collection of data through research on Out-Of-School Vulnerable Children in their various communities.

How will this make a lasting impact on targeted communities?

Education breaks the vicious cycle of poverty. It is the most powerful weapon that vulnerable and marginalized children have to change their future because it provides the foundation for lifelong learning, and helps children learn the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in school, life and work.

This project will help children build strong relationships with peers and adults, it will create the opportunity for them to develop mentally, physically and socially. It will also help children to get the necessary experience, skills and confidence to face the outside world and explore themselves. Making them less susceptible to the influence of others and the community’s endless negative social norms, culture and traditional practices such as early/forced marriage, teenage pregnancy, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (S.G.B.V), Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (F.G.M/C) thereby fostering women, adolescents and children’s human rights in every community.

This project will allow children to start building goals for themselves and achieve them by providing them with knowledge such as how to produce artwork and make music, and build the nation’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for sustainable development.