Tag Archives: Rotifunk

Breaking the barrier of illiteracy

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Junior Secondary School 3 students (JSS3 or 9th grade in the U. S.) across Sierra Leone last week completed the BECE exam.  The Basic Education Certificate Examination is a standardized exam administered throughout West Africa by the West African Examination Council to certify students are ready to progress to senior high school.

This is a quiet milestone. But progressing to high school should be celebrated as a big deal for a country where 56% of adults over the age of 15 years in 2011 have never attended formal school. (World Bank data) This number seemed high to me.  But if you stop to think, it’s again that group of young adults whose educations were interrupted by the war and its aftermath.

JSS3 students from four Rotifunk secondary schools are glad the rigorous BECE exam is over.  Twenty two subjects are offered, and students expected to test in 10-13 subjects that take 2 to 2 ½ hours each.  That means 5-6 days of testing for each student.

To pass the BECE, students must pass at least six subjects, including English and Math.  Sierra Leone pass rates last year were only 50% of test takers in Language Arts and 57% in Math; it’s not an easy exam.  Less than half the students taking the BECE in 2012 in the Southern Province where Rotifunk sits passed the overall exam.

Four Rotifunk secondary schools are taking the exam:  Walter Schutz Memorial Secondary School (where I taught many years ago), Prosperity Girls High School, Ahmadiyya Islamic School and Rotifunk’s Christian academy.

Student debaters at Walter Schutz Secondary School and their teacher after completing a debate.

Student debaters at Walter Schutz Secondary School and their teacher after completing a debate.

Prosperity Girls High School was the stand-out in 2012, not only in Rotifunk, but in Moyamba District (one of 12 administrative districts in the country). 100% of PGHS girls taking the BECE exam passed. This is significant given the area’s first all-girls secondary school had only been open three years when students first sat for the BECE last year.  It was the first time each individual girl took the exam, and the first time the school sent students to sit for the exam.  It was also the first year JSS3 – or 9th grade – had been offered at this new school.

Prosperity Girls High School was recognized by the Ministry of Education for their exceptional results.  It was noted their results could be compared with schools in the district open for a hundred years. Their net results were seen as second in the district, given their actual scores and smaller number of students.

So, how did PGHS pull this off?  It starts with an excellent principal and excellent teachers who are capable in their respective subjects and highly committed to their students.  But their secret ingredient is holding what Principal Kaimbay calls a camp – a month long study camp.

JSS3 students hunker down at the school and live there dormitory style all week while the teachers conduct comprehensive reviews of the whole curriculum.  Principal Kaimbay sleeps at the school with them, getting them up at 5:00 AM to begin an early study period before review classes start at 8:00 AM.  They have afternoon breaks for sports and rest, and evening review classes begin again after dinner til about 10 PM.  They can go home for the weekend, and return to begin the condensed study program again on Monday – for a whole month.

This approach delivered results.  Every girl passed in 2012, allowing PGHS to open their first senior high class (10th grade) for the current 2013 academic year.  Mrs. Kaimbay attributes their success to the comprehensive review and keeping the students focused.  We make sure we review every subject and the full curriculum before the exam, she said.  We try to verify knowledge and assist each student.  We provide the  focus and discipline for studying that they would not be able to get if they were studying at home.

Twenty eight JSS3 students from PGHS sat for the BECE this year.  So, it requires not only discipline for the students, but a huge commitment by the teachers and principal. As in countries everywhere, the teachers and principal are the heroes of this story.

I asked PGHS teacher Mr. Sonnah how it was going a couple weeks ago.  Great, he said.  They did a better job preparing the study camp this second time around, so he expects to see results on par with last year. 

Sherbro Foundation knows  JSS3 students from all Rotifunk’s secondary schools have worked hard to be ready for the BECE.  We wish them all the best as they await their results.

Growing the ranks of students ready for senior high is essential for this rural community – and for the country – to continue their development journey and move beyond poverty.  There will no doubt be barriers to the students completing senior high and then joining the workforce.  But academic readiness should not be one of them.  It should be an enabler.   Fortunately, in Rotifunk students are being given a good start. 

You can help.   One barrier Sherbro Foundation is helping to remove is the burden of school fees for rural families unable to pay them.  Consider contributing to the Girls Scholarship Fund that awards school fee scholarships to girls in all four Rotifunk secondary schools.   $22 USD pays fees for one senior high girl to attend school for the year.  $18 USD covers annual school fees for one junior high girl.   You can find an on-line donation button in the right hand column of the website.

Growing trees with economic value

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Let’s talk about the another part of the Sherbro Foundation’s work – helping to spur economic development in a rural community.

On my last two trips to Sierra Leone an idea was percolating in my brain that finally crystalized.  I recognized I wanted to do something beyond the cycle of donations for traditional nonprofit work supporting education, health, community services and the like.  Don’t get me wrong.  These are important and much needed.  These are a lot of what Sherbro Foundation is doing, too.

But I also wanted to do something else.  Something more.

The more is giving the chiefdom a boost in economic development, and their main economic livelihood is agriculture.  This chiefdom is blessed with fertile land for agriculture and rivers with which to irrigate.  It is lacking the means for most people to develop and expand beyond subsistence agriculture, or to further develop agriculture as a business.

Doing more is helping people expand and diversify their family farm crops, increasing their own food security and allowing them to sell a little excess for much needed cash.

Doing more is also helping spur small farming business that can expand, and in doing so, create paid jobs where none now exist. Getting jobs with regular paid wages can help people join the “formal economy” where they can then pay their own children’s school fees and buy their own mosquito nets.

I was astounded when Bumpeh Chiefdom Paramount Chief Caulker told me what typical cash incomes are in many small villages.  It may be as small as 50,000 Leones/year.  This is little more than $10 USD.  $10 per year, that is.  This is the bottom of the subsistence scale, an informal economy of barter.  You locally trade or sell small amounts of what you grow.  Otherwise, you live off the land, and the fish in the rivers.  Or small game you may be able to hunt.  Bush beef we called it.  You may be able to raise a few goats and chickens.

Tending a vegetable garden. Day care on your back.

Tending a vegetable garden. Day care on your back.

The most disadvantaged are young adults, eighteen and up, ready to start out on the own.  Also women divorced or separated from husbands, left to fend for themselves and their children.  The families of these groups literally do not have any excess money to loan them to start their farms and vegetable gardens.  With no money for tools, seed, and fertilizer, these groups are stuck. Stuck in extreme poverty.

The Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation, Rotifunk’s all-volunteer group for community development is beginning to tackle this area by starting a tree nursery for trees of economic value.

The idea came up one day on my last trip when we needed to escape the heat of a tropical afternoon in the dry season.  Come on, said Chief Caulker, let’s go pick grapefruits.  We took chairs beyond his house and down a hill to an old citrus orchard started by his father fifty years ago.  I didn’t know citrus trees live 50+ years; maybe the non-hybridized kind.

Boys catch grapefruits being picked.

Boys catch grapefruits being picked in mature fruit orchard.

Picking fruit meant sending boys to shinny up a tree in their bare feet to drop grapefruits down to other waiting kids.  They hold out gunny sacks to break the fall of fruits and not squash them.  Then we divvy up the fruit so everyone gets some.  We sent someone to find bread and made “sandwiches” for the kids with groundnut paste – roasted peanuts you grind up with an empty bottle on a board.

We were enjoying the grapefruits and Chief Caulker reminisced about how he had had “his tree,” his birth tree, and how this is no longer being done.  Probably another casualty lost to the war. Your Tree is where your umbilical cord is planted after your birth together with a tree seedling.  It grows as you grow, and it’s Your Tree.  An old custom in many parts of Africa.

A charming and practical custom, I agreed.  We need more trees planted in this country.  I see fire wood being cut left and right.  How are trees being replanted?

This led to a conversation about how we should start planting trees and get the new community based organization – the Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation, still an idea, but at least that day drafted on paper – to start this.

Four months later, as I write this, CCET volunteers are planting the Economic Tree Nursery.  The rainy season has started, and it’s time to plant trees.

CCET has started with fruit trees they are germinating from seed and growing themselves to seedlings.  Orange, grapefruit, lemon (we call lime) and mango.

CCET will transplant seedlings to small polythene bags and nurse them til next season, when local people can buy them at a small nominal cost for their farm or garden. Mr. Sonnah, agriculture teacher and CCET volunteer explained, people take things more seriously when they have to pay something for them.  Same thing at home, I said.  These small fees will go back to purchase materials to start new seedlings each year.

Mr. Sonnah said getting fruit trees will improve a family’s food security, giving them another food source and diversifying their diet.  Fruit trees are typically planted near rivers and streams, helping keep them watered.  As trees mature, they then protect the water catchment area. Trees are like sponges, taking up water, and their roots prevent run-off and erosion in the heavy tropical rains.  These water filled trees then help keep streams from easily drying up in the dry season.  People will need chiefdom permission to cut down economic trees and pay a small fee, as well as replant the tree.  This is to discourage trees being cut for firewood.  Acacia, a fast growing “weed tree” can be used for fire wood.

Village woman extracting oil from palm fruits in her canoe.

Village woman extracting oil from palm fruits in her canoe.

CCET is also starting to nurse oil palm seedlings they bought from Njala University’s agriculture school.  Oil palms are native to Sierra Leone, and the oil from the palm fruits is a mainstay of the local diet.  Palm oil is increasingly used globally for a variety of applications, and is a good cash crop.  The Njala seedlings are a new variety that will produce faster,  fruiting in about four years.

Nine hundred teak seedlings from another source have also been added to CCET’s tree nursery.  These need special care with careful pruning and cultivation as young seedlings.  Next rainy season they’ll be bigger and stronger, and ready to be sold and transplanted again for future lumber harvesting.

CCET will organize workshops and 1:1 training on how to plant and care for all the trees that will be sold.  With 60% of the country’s population under 24 years of age, these are skills that were lost in the war years and now needed for young adults and women needing to become farmers.

The custom of children getting “their tree” will start again, as well.  CCET will ensure each child has a tree planted at birth.  In this way, you will also be able to tell how many children were recently born in a village by counting the number of new trees.

This project is a good example of how a few people can make a big difference when they work together and just get going on a practical first step.

Many benefits follow this project: economic development, food security, environmental protection, protecting cultural traditions, empowering youth and women as farmers.

Sherbro Foundation is glad to have contributed the funding to buy farm tools for the tree nursery and the oil palm seedlings.

Adult Literacy – what do they really need to know?

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It’s estimated that 70% of Sierra Leone’s population lives at the impoverished level of $2 USD/day or less. This is sometimes globally called the bottom billion, the lowest tier on the ladder of the world’s seven billion population.

This is true of rural Bumpeh Chiefdom. As you move into more remote villages, the percent no doubt climbs above 70% to most if not all of these communities.  With this kind of poverty comes lack of education.   

If you want to provide adult literacy education, where do you start? Literally, where should you begin in this kind of environment?

A good place is to know the group you aim to educate.  This is where Rotifunk’s Center for Empowerment and Transformation, a local all-volunteer group of Rotifunk teachers is beginning their work on adult literacy.

Shortly after Prosperity Girls High School Principal, Rosaline Kaimbay came to Rotifunk to begin her work on the school, adults expressed their interest in learning to read and write.  Others had attended school, but had to drop out and wanted to continue and develop skills to join the job market.  Or to help their own children as they progress through school.  The Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation has made adult literacy for these people a cornerstone of the Center’s work.

I asked about a profile of the current adult learners.  All are now women; hopefully the men will follow.  The majority of the women are single heads of household, divorced, separated or widowed.  They are mainly in their mid-30’s, but range from 20 years old and up.  This is the group that would have had their schools abruptly shut or interrupted during Sierra Leone’s civil war when towns and villages were abandoned to rebel fighting.  In the early years of rebuilding following the war, schooling would have either not yet been available, or the cost beyond the reach of rural families.  Girls’ education would traditionally have been given low priority, especially as a girl approached marriageable age.

Women fetching water for their vegetable garden.

Women fetching water for their vegetable garden.

Early primary school learning for these women has long been lost and forgotten.  They moved on with their lives in the footsteps of their mothers and grandmothers, doing the work available in a subsistence agriculture community.  They became small traders and small farmers.

In one way or another, 70% of Sierra Leone’s population is involved in agriculture.  Either they grow things themselves, or they are small traders who buy agricultural products like rice, palm oil and vegetables in quantity from small farms and bring them to resell in larger village and town markets.

Small traders may also buy “general store” items in larger towns to resell in local markets – cooking utensils, plastic buckets and basins, soap, batteries, plastic sandals, cloth and so on.

These are working women, working in what’s called the informal economy.  It’s the economy of small farmers whose schedules are driven by the planting and harvesting seasons, and of small traders who must be available for market days in towns and villages where they sell their wares.  They need knowledge that will help them improve their current lives, and on a flexible schedule.

Women selling fish in Rotifunk's market.

Small trader selling smoked fish in Rotifunk’s market.

Traditional reading and writing is not the first priority for these women.  The typical classroom reading, grammar and writing kind of stuff that you get over twelve years of public education is not of immediate use to them.  Basic arithmetic is a priority.  Vocational skills tailored to their kind of work are another need.

The volunteer teachers at the Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation are embarking on a “functional adult literacy” program. They will teach their adult learners what they need to know to successfully conduct their business and improve their lives.

Traders need to know basic computations to ensure they’re getting the best price for their goods, how to calculate interest for the small loans they invariably take (or maybe give to friends), and skills on how to better market the goods they sell.

Small farmers need to know about applying fertilizer and manure, when and how much, and how to “add value” to their agricultural products by further processing or packaging to get a better price.

They would all like to know more about female reproductive health and social skills to better manage conflicts (known here as palavers), useful when you’re living in the confines of a small village.  And they’re enjoying recreation organized specifically for them – women’s football (soccer) teams.  Where else would a village mother find the time (or give herself the permission) to play sports and release the pent up stress of living in poverty and develop the camaraderie of a group of peer women.

There’s no curriculum for this kind of functional learning, so the Center’s volunteer teachers will develop their own lessons.  Experienced teachers know how to do this, and build as they go.  They understand these things when they lived embedded in the community with their students, and are committed to working with them.

Now, how to give these women the time from their busy lives to take advantage and improve themselves?  Sound familiar? I have no doubt this program will grow and the merits be known by word of mouth from the initial group of students.  Success breeds more success.

The Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation – another bright star

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Trying to do good in another country is not always straightforward.  First, you need to find well-defined projects you believe will “do good” in the area you want to serve.  Then you need a trusted partner on the ground who shares your objectives and can effectively deliver the nuts-and-bolts work, and do it with integrity.

The Sherbro Foundation is fortunate to have found such a partner in The Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation.  CCET is a grassroots, all-volunteer nonprofit group of Sierra Leoneans organized for the development of Rotifunk and Bumpeh Chiefdom.

It’s quite a name and tells you right off what the vision of this group is. It’s no less than the empowerment and transformation of their community.

I was fortunate to have had an early and impactful learning from my old days in the Peace Corps that I’ve carried with me all these years.  To make lasting change or improvements, don’t show up with your pre-cooked “solution” and try to give it to people who aren’t sold on – or maybe even aware of – the problem you’ve selected for them. This is generally true anywhere, and even more true when working with a rural community of another culture. 

Still today, I see too many NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) trying to solve the problems of the world with their own “programs”.  They may not spend enough time in the developing country communities they want to serve to jointly set priorities and agree on approaches to use.

It was a stroke of luck that found me back in Rotifunk for my third return trip right as the concept for the Center for Community Empowerment and Transformation was taking shape.  I was visiting more of the chiefdom and better understanding the extent of the needs there.   I arrived already frustrated in not finding existing nonprofit organizations in the U. S. interested in supporting the kind of small community projects I saw needed in Bumpeh Chiefdom.  Grant applications, even if successful, can take months if not a year or more to process. I was already toying with the idea of creating my own nonprofit.

At the same time Prosperity Girls High School had just started their first senior high class, and with that, hired several new teachers.  More competent and committed teachers joined those already at PGHS, ready to serve this rural community.   Within a month of their arrival, several of the new teachers joined up with existing teachers to form the concept for a community based organization.

The Center concept

I asked Mr. Sonnah and Mr. Kamara, PGHS teachers and thought leaders in the Center, how their concept had come about. Both relayed the same story.  Some old university friends of theirs representing an NGO had come to Rotifunk to do a survey.  They challenged them to create their own community-based organization.  Come on, they said.  You’re in this rural place with time on your hands; you have the education and potential to be doing more. 

Mr. Sonnah and his 7th grade class.

Mr. Sonnah and his 7th grade class.

The teachers had already seen how PGHS principal Rosaline Kaimbay was struggling to start adult literacy classes, holding intermittent lessons on the front porch of her house after school let out.  The majority of the adult students were women whose educations were interrupted, or maybe never started, because of the war.

The teachers agreed adult literacy would become the first core program for the Center to take on and they would do it on a volunteer basis.

Mr. Kamara in a moment of relaxing.

Mr. Kamara in a moment of relaxing.

More projects soon followed.  The Center’s current project portfolio includes:

  1. Adult literacy – starting with creating a curriculum of practical skills for small traders and farmers that are illiterate, mainly women.  
  2. Girls Scholarship program – paying school fees to keep teenage girls in Rotifunk’s four secondary schools at a time when drop out rates for girls climb and families have great difficulty paying for the cost of an education.
  3. Tree nursery for trees of economic value – nursing small teak tree and oil palm seedlings and starting citrus and avocado trees from seed to provide to the community at nominal cost.
  4. Computer literacy – building the computer skills of local teachers in preparation for organizing the community computer lab the Sherbro Foundation has facilitated with a donated shipment of fifty computers now on their way to Rotifunk.
  5.  Registration of chiefdom births and deaths –helping set up a model process where none now exists in Bumpeh Chiefdom, or most of rural Sierra Leone.
  6.  Adult sports teams for women – organizing women’s football (soccer) teams to give women still traumatized from the war a physical outlet for stress and team building for a peer network.

Within five months of their initial conceptual discussion, the Center volunteers are busy planting trees, teaching computer skills, and developing lessons on basic computations for illiterate market women.

This is what I call empowerment.  They’re getting going on concrete, practical programs that can help transform their community using  the limited resources they have.

The Sherbro Foundation is proud to have helped with start-up costs for the Center.  We have donated money to pay fees for the Center to officially register as a nonprofit with several Sierra Leone ministries, making them eligible for local grant funds.  We have also provided money for classroom furniture to be locally built for the computer lab, and to purchase farming tools and oil palm seedlings for the tree nursery.  We will fund a one-day workshop where people will be taught how to complete the birth/death registrations.

More will follow on each of these projects.

Mr. Sonnah explained the Center’s logo to me and how it symbolizes what they plan to accomplish.  A man and a woman are together holding one torch light.  Light brings about transformation, and men and women are equally balanced in holding one light.  They are surrounded by olive branches depicting them rescuing the chiefdom from its past traumas.  They are transforming the chiefdom to be a better place.  Mr. Kamara said in his quietly confident manner, we are developing our brothers and sisters, and we know with our work today, tomorrow will be a brighter day.  We see our future as bright.

The Sherbro Foundation sees their future as bright, too, and we’re happy to be helping them on their way.

How you can help

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DSCN0359

Donations are great, but there’s other ways to help, too.

  • Like us on Facebook and “share” Sherbro Foundation Facebook news items to your Friends list.
  • Identify organizations interested in supporting girls education, solar energy & agriculture in West Africa.  eg., Churches doing mission & outreach work;  Schools doing public service & educational projects; Foundations & Nonprofits interested in these areas.  Help connect us and advocate for us.
  • Help design a logo for Sherbro Foundation with a .jpeg image.
  • Sponsor a girl for one year in secondary school by paying school fees:
    • $18  for Junior High
    • $22  for Senior High
    • $35  for a school uniform & shoes she’ll wear for two years or more
  • Find used or in-kind donations for schools:
    • Educational videos, tutorials on DVD (eg., math lessons), school supplies, books, computer mouse & mouse pads.
  • Support our current Projects – donate online using the “Donate” button to the right on each page
    • Fifty Laptop computer carrying bags for the new computer lab – about $15 /bag    Current need!
    • Solar Energy System for the Computer Lab
    • Office printer (need 220V equipment)
    • Sponsor a Science teacher for additional teacher training – $250/year
    • Community economic tree nursery – nurse seedlings for local families / create demonstration garden and train on growing
    • Village Cooperative Store – stock household items to sell at cost for a small, subsistence agriculture village; avoid markup costs & provide initial stock for a co-op store

Sherbro Foundation invited to be part of Cincinnati’s Freedom Center event

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The Sherbro Foundation was delighted to be invited to participate in an important event for women worldwide May 22 at Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The free public evening kicked off with a 5:30 p.m. reception and Action Fair. National and local nonprofits – including Sherbro Foundation — offered information about their efforts to uplift women and eliminate oppression and discrimination, both here and abroad, and how you can help.

The event is a follow-up to the recent traveling exhibit at the Freedom Center, “Women Hold Up Half the Sky,’’ based on the bestselling book, “Half the Sky – Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” Both serve as wake-up calls to the injustices perpetrated against women worldwide and the ways to effect change.

The program began with a 40-minute version of the PBS Half the Sky documentary.  A short keynote address was presented via live satellite by Half the Sky Executive Producer Mikaela Beardsley and followed by a brief panel discussion with local volunteers and activists.

The evening wrapped up with a longer Action Fair at to give attendees an opportunity to learn more about organizations supporting women locally and globally and how you can get involved and support them through volunteerism, advocacy or giving.

For more information on the Half the Sky movement, visit: www.halftheskymovement.org

Become an Agent of Change - Half the Sky Event Invitation (2)

Rebuilding Bumpeh Chiefdom after Sierra Leone’s civil war

Rebuilding Bumpeh Chiefdom after Sierra Leone’s civil war

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Rotifunk, the seat of Bumpeh Chiefdom, was devastated in Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war.  About 55 miles southeast of the capital, Freetown, Rotifunk was hit hard as rebel soldiers burned and looted their way to the capital.  Every building in the town of about 10,000 was burned except for a church and a mosque, and its people forced to flee. The town abandoned for several years.  The result:  total collapse of the socio-economic fabric, and a once bustling town found itself in abject poverty.

The war ended in 2001. Now a safe, peaceful, country, Sierra Leone is still, however, one where 70% of families struggle to survive in the aftermath of the civil war on $2 a day or less.   This is true for the rural community of Rotifunk and Bumpeh Chiefdom where agriculture is the main livelihood.

Back on its feet, Rotifunk has rebuilt itself to once again serve as the center of trade, education and health care for the area. Rotifunk is known for its lively Saturday market, where farmers and small traders from across the chiefdom come to sell their wares.  Fish from local  rivers are plentiful, as well as locally grown fruit and vegetables.   Rotifunk is preparing for its future by educating its children.  Four secondary schools are now operating, including all-girls and Islamic schools.

August 28, 2014 update: Latest up on Rotifunk’s first computer program.  We are turning a town tragedy into a triumph.  A community computer center is being built as I write this from the ashes of a rebel burned building. http://sherbrofoundation.org/2014/08/25/computing-center-roof-is-up/   This is all going on while the Ebola crisis rages.  Sherbro Foundation is helping Rotifunk and Bumpeh Chiefdom with a community-led Ebola prevention program that reaches down to the small village level.  You can help, too. Read on here.

We work as partners

We work as partners

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As a U.S. based all-volunteer nonprofit, we partner with Sierra Leone community organizations to complete projects.  We support locally based groups in achieving their goals to strengthen and develop their communities.

Founder Arlene Golembiewski’s work in Rotifunk and Bumpeh chiefdom started with the Prosperity Girls High School, the first all-girls secondary school in the chiefdom.  PGHS was founded in 2009 and was expanding quickly.  Her aim to encourage girls in secondary education found fertile ground by partnering with PGHS on specific mutually agreed objectives like a scholarship fund for school fees in 2011.

With formation of Sherbro Foundation, this has expanded to a scholarship fund that is eligible to girls from all four secondary schools in Rotifunk.  The Center for Community Empowerment and Development now manages the scholarship fund and other community development projects in Bumpeh Chiefdom.  The PGHS teachers founded this “community based organization” and are volunteering their efforts in the Center to improve the community.  Other competencies they’re working on are adult literacy and computer literacy.

Sherbro Foundation works closely with organizations to first understand community needs, and then define clear and achievable project objectives we can work on together. By partnering with well regarded local organizations to deliver projects, Sherbro Foundation is able to avoid overhead and ensure every dollar we contribute goes directly to grass roots rural development.