Breaking barriers to education in Africa

Hakeem Schools aims to break through the barriers many children face to obtain an education in Sierra Leone. One of the largest obstacles is broken infrastructure, in other words the actual lack of schools in poor areas.

Hakeem Schools began back in 1994 when we set up a building with one schoolroom. Today we have over 700 children attending, learning, training and receiving our lunches.

We fight poverty and other obstacles to children’s education by providing educational programs and vocational training geared towards self-employment and self-sufficiency.

The hands of those in need: children who are forced out of school due to a range of barriers including poverty, impacts from civil war, Ebola, landslides and more.Sierra Leone — UNDP’s efforts to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone. Image courtesy of United Nations Development Program.

Ways we overcome the obstacles:

Keeping our school fees very low.
Generating income for the school by offering projects like our home-industry sewing initiative, farming projects and in-house bakery. Our aim is to generate sustainable income streams. For example, our farmers sell their produce locally. The revenue helps us to subsidise many of our lowest-income students.
Helping to pay school fees for the hardest hit. Of our currently 700 plus students, some 400 have subsidised fees. Some are fully subsidised.
Our ‘student to teacher’ pathway helps many young people by employing them on graduation. Some 40 of our teachers were originally students at our school! This provides them with employment, and also these close connections generate an incentive for kids to work and study hard. Out of our staff of 32 teachers, 11 are former students.
Offering quality education for kids who would otherwise miss out. We provide a secular education based on the British school curriculum and there are choices of a range of scripture classes. Our resources are not high tech, but our students’ grades are great.
As well as providing school classrooms and other basics for learning we provide lunch boxes. These are free lunch for our students, particularly for kids who are very vulnerable and orphans.

Rebuilding education in Sierra Leone

Many children of school age do not go to school in Sierra Leone. While many want to go to primary and secondary school to learn for wisdom and future work, a shortage of schools, teachers and other major barriers have made this impossible for them.

Khadija Fofanah

“Without Hakeem Schools, my children would have never had the opportunity to attend a school and now thanks to the school my oldest daughter is now working as an assistant nurse and helping to provide for my family.”

Barriers to education

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world and half the population live below the poverty line. Many families in dire poverty need their children to help supplement the family income.¹ A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) study says for many families it is a choice between “putting food on the table or sending a child to school.” ² This choice is so devastating for families when they have to choose among their child who goes to school and who works to supplement the family income. Girls are overwhelmingly the ones to miss out, an outcome Hakeem Schools aim to change and ensure that a child’s gender does not dictate their future.

A school destroyed during the 12-year war in Sierra Leone, one of many schools destroyed that Hakeem Schools has been set up to replace — A school in Koindu destroyed by RUF rebel forces. In total, 1,270 primary schools were destroyed in the War. Photo: Laura Lartigue.

Why are they out of school?

The lasting impact of the country’s 12-year civil war cannot be underestimated as to why so many kids are out-of-school. Before the war, Sierra Leone had one of the best education systems in Africa. Yet thousands of children were used as fighters and over 1,000 primary schools were destroyed in the war. Overall, 67% of school-age children were forced from school. ³

One crisis after another

While the civil war ended in 2002 and restoration began, the Ebola crisis hit in 2014 and the situation worsened. Thousands of children were orphaned and many lived in the streets. In 2017 there were huge landslides that further devastated the country. Add to this the COVID-19 crisis.

Eighteen-year old at the time, Celina Kamanda says she wants to be a doctor, after Ebola ravaged her country, Sierra Leone, in west Africa — “‘Now I want to be a doctor,” said Celina Kamanda, then aged 18 and an Ebola survivor in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Courtesy of DFID – UK Department for International Development.

All masked up during the Ebola crisis that struck many countries in Africa including Sierra Leone where this was taken — Sierra Leone into the Ebola epicenter by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid.

School Closures

In 2020, the COVID-pandemic forced closures of schools in Sierra Leone for almost six months. While schools reopened in October 2020, many families still struggle to send their children back to school. ⁴

One of the many obstacles facing kids going to school in Sierra Leone was the mudslides of 2017. — Kumba. from Freetown, Sierra Leone many homes were destroyed when a devastating landslide hit on August 14, 2017. Photo: Mark Stedman.

Overview: obstacles facing an out-of-school child

Poverty
Lack of schools, educational materials
Shortage of teachers
Conflict with survival demands (like getting water)
Malnutrition
Gender discrimination for girls

At Hakeem Schools we are not just breaking the barriers, but filling the gaps in education for the poor

Others supporting out-of-school children to obtain education and training include government initiatives and those put in place by organisations like UNICEF. These combined are helping locate vulnerable children out-of-school, and offer them pathways to return and attend school to graduation day. Hakeem Schools is filling the gaps.

Sources:

Al Jazeera, Global Partnership, Social Progress Imperative, Relief Web

The Out-of-school Children of Sierra Leone August 2008. https://www.allinschool.org/media/1911/file/Sierra-Leone-OOSCI-Country-Study-2008-en.pdf.
The out-of-school children of Sierra Leone, Reliefweb. https://reliefweb.int/report/sierra-leone/out-school-children-sierra-leone.
ORGANIZATIONS IMPROVING EDUCATION IN SIERRA LEONE
https://borgenproject.org/tag/education-in-sierra-leone/#:~:text=Education%20in%20Sierra%20Leone%20has%20been%20a%20challenge.,school%20in%20the%20year%202001.
UNICEF, West and Central Africa
https://www.unicef.org/wca/press-releases/only-1-3-countries-have-re-opened-school-west-and-central-africa.