Isatu is a remarkable girl. She’s an orphan determined to stay in school. With help from Sherbro Foundation scholarships, she has made it to her senior year!
Each day is a challenge in Bumpeh Chiefdom, Sierra Leone. Isatu lost both her parents as a young girl. She lives with her aunt, a farmer, in their small village of mud houses outside Rotifunk. There’s no public transportation. Isatu and her friends get up before dawn and walk six miles to school.
After school, Isatu walks six miles again home, and then helps her aunt in the field, tending cassava, rice and greens. They grow their own food, but have little left to sell for income for school fees. Darkness comes by 6:30 year-round near the equator. Isatu can’t afford a lamp to study in the evening.
Yet Isatu has big plans. She wants to become a lawyer. She learned in Civics class that lawyers use the law to protect people. “I want to fight for my colleagues and people in the village against violence” and for better conditions, she says. If Isatu hadn’t received a Sherbro Foundation scholarship, she wouldn’t be in school, and wouldn’t be learning about a world of jobs and careers.
Bumpeh Academy students – Isatu, left, Hellen and Alima
More Bumpeh Chiefdom girls than ever are in school. Nearly 900 girls were enrolled in the area’s five secondary schools at this term’s end.
But hundreds more want to go to school and don’t have $17 to pay the annual fee! Their families are struggling to earn $1 per day to put food on the table. Sierra Leone’s economy went into freefall after Ebola and has not recovered. Families can’t continue to support teenage girls, and many are pushed to marry at 16 and 17. They get pregnant too early. The cycle of poverty continues. Teen pregnancy keeps Sierra Leone’s maternal and infant mortality rates among the world’s highest.
In four years, Sherbro Foundation’s scholarship program has helped 450 girls enter – and stay – in school.
Girls with scholarships work harder in school in order to keep them. They know there’s competition. They now have bigger goals, and pregnancies are reduced to only a few.
Some graduates will go on to vocational training. Some like Isatu are determined to go to college. They want to become the nurses, doctors, teachers, accountants, policewomen and lawyers their country desperately needs. With education, they all can move beyond the cycle of subsistence life that has long trapped their families.
But our scholarships have only helped a third of the girls enrolled. Even more want to go to school.
Now is a crucial time. With the new school year starting soon, you can give more of these girls the gift of attending school. You can:
- Ensure 350 girls have the chance to go to school this year with a $17 scholarship.
- Help girls progress into senior high and bring new 7th graders into junior high.
- Provide a new uniform for 7th graders and 10th graders starting in new schools.
With a strong U.S. dollar, giving is a great bargain. Your $50 will sponsor three junior-high students to make the important leap to secondary school. Or ensure that three older girls can focus on graduation.
$35 will send a girl to school for an entire year AND outfit her with a school uniform. Where else can $35 do as much good as educating a girl?
More good news: Our Board pledges to match each gift. You’ll help twice as many girls!
It’s easy to donate online: Click here. We welcome checks sent to: Sherbro Foundation, 3723 Sachem Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45226.
Bumpeh Chiefdom’s girls tell us: “We’re ready to learn.”
You’ll open up their world to new possibilities by giving girls a scholarship.
Thank you!
Arlene Golembiewski, Chris Golembiewski, Cheryl Farmer and Steve Papelian
— The Sherbro Foundation Board of Directors
P.S. Isatu and her fellow students are so grateful to you for expanding their world. Won’t you help a few more of her friends? If you do so now, they can be ready for school in September!
Some like Alima Kanu, left, JSS II (8th grade), are the oldest and first child in their family to go to secondary school. She comes from a small village where her parents are rice farmers. Her scholarship to Bumpeh Academy made the difference in her continuing in secondary school.
With her scholarship, Isatu Kargbo, left, completed JSS III (9th grade) and got the highest result of 127 students taking the senior high entrance exam.
Sherbro Foundation supports five Bumpeh Chiefdom secondary schools of all faiths with scholarships. I met with the 50 girls at Ahmadiyya Islamic Secondary School receiving scholarships this academic year.
She went on to talk about the challenges the girls face in going to school. There are 208 villages in the chiefdom and only five secondary schools. Many girls must walk 4 or 5 miles or more each way to reach one of schools, often making them late for class. And the tropical sun is hot walking home on an empty stomach to get their one meal of the day.
Kadiatu, left, told me most girls have no lights at home and have difficulty studying at night. By the time they get home and do chores, it’s dark. At the equator, it’s dark by 7 p.m. year-round.
Members of the Caulker Descendants Association at their July 2016 family reunion – their 17th reunion.
The Caulker Family tree documents their 350 year history starting at the base of the tree with Thomas Coker, born 1667 in Ireland. The tree was constructed by Imodale Caulker Burnett after many years of research into the family’s history she then chronicled in 
A family reunion wouldn’t be complete without a sheet cake to serve a crowd. But how many families can decorate their cake with a family coat of arms dating to the 1600’s. 
Arlene Golembiewski, Sherbro Foundation Executive Director, accepts the Caulker family Scholarship Fund donation from Enid Rogers, a Caulker grandchild, at their reunion banquet dinner. 
Zainab’s story stated out badly. She’s one of many girls faced with poverty and an early arranged marriage when her mother could no longer pay for her to stay in secondary school. Zainab later left this older man, who already had a wife, and she returned to school.
For years, the longtime traditional leader of Bumpeh Chiefdom dreamed of ways life could improve for its 44,000 rural residents.
“Girls are more serious and work harder. They get better jobs. They take their family responsibilities seriously, and ensure their children and parents are taken care of.
“Women do 70 percent of the work on the family farm but are not allowed to make decisions on running the farm or selling crops. Their husband controls the money and may carelessly spend it on himself for things like gambling with his friends,” he said frankly.
“His wife returns late in the day as the sun is going down. She may still need to go buy fresh produce and collect firewood and water before making a fire to cook the family dinner. Her husband will then expect her to have sex that night and she can’t refuse.”
Walter Schutz Memorial Secondary School students
Scholarship awardees from three schools flanked by CCET Executive Director, Mrs. Rosaline Kaimbay (left) and CCET Child Welfare program director, Abdul Foday (lower right). Schools left to right: Walter Schutz SS, Ahmadiyya SS, Bumpeh Academy SS
Ahmadiyya Islamic Secondary School students
Earnest Bai Koroma Junior Secondary School in Mosimbara village, Bumpeh Chiefdom’s newest secondary school. Children from small villages can start secondary school here close to home, and later transfer to Rotifunk for senior high.
Vain Memorial Primary School, serving six villages in Bellentine Section. Primary school students got 2 uniforms each. Mothers of many children in this school are in our Women’s Vegetable Growing project.
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Sherbro Foundation 