PROJECTS

Shine on Sierra Leone

Bongema Elementary School

Before leaving for Sierra Leone $6000.00 was raised to gift students with uniforms, back packs and textbooks. While filming a small mining village in Kono, Sierra Leone, we encountered something that changed everything.

Bongema Elementary School

1 Roofless Building
3 Classrooms
415 Students
2 Grades Per Classroom
6 Volunteer Teachers. 1 Paid Headmaster

Bongema Elementary School is filled with some of Kono's brightest and most promising children. Eager to learn, they rarely miss class except when sent home during the annual 6- month torrential rains that soak their makeshift notebooks and turn their classrooms dirt floor into a muddy puddle. 415 students. 3 rooms. That breaks down to well over 100 students per classroom. In order to sustain itself, Bongema charges a monthly fee of $5000 Leones. That works out to be exactly $1.33 American dollars. This figure may seem low to us, but it is enough to keep one third of the village's children from attending class.

The United Nations donated student benches to this school 5 years ago, but after years of heavy rains, wood rot has caused them to fall apart or break down completely. What is left is enough to seat half of the children enrolled in school. Those left without a seat alternately sit on the floor or stand during their lessons. Toilets have been broken "for years." There is no outstanding need for backpacks because the students only have micro-thin notebooks to place inside them. Backpacks, school uniforms, and textbooks are not acceptable panaceas for this extreme situation.

After several meeting with the school's Headmaster, I was able to assess the short and long-term needs of the school. The UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) graciously lent a truck and a driver, for several days, as the necessary supplies were collected to rebuild Bongema Elementary School.

150 Wooden Boards
50 bags of cement
6 trips of sand
6 trips of marble
25 bundles of zinc
5 iron doors
Handmade wooden 3-student benches
16 workmen

Dawn to Dusk.

After 10 days, the school was reborn. Brand new roof, cemented floor, painted interior and exterior walls, repaired toilets, brand new desks, new iron doors with locks.

Now that the foundation of the school has been restored, the focus now shifts to the educational content, staff support, student nutrition and overall maintenance.

A U.S. school will be selected to become a sister school to Bongema Elementary. This sister school will serve as a companion and support team to the students in Sierra Leone. Students in both countries will exchange information about their culture, environment, families, goals, dreams, similarities, differences, and ways in which they are interdependent. This cultural exchange will raise awareness and help students from both countries impact and change their respective communities. Students from the U.S. school will raise funds for the needs in their school as well as the school in Bongema. Students in Bongema will be required to identify what is unique and valuable about their culture and experience, teaching and giving their gifts back to students and donors in the US. Students will experience empowerment through reciprocity.