2017 Update

The new year has been a busy one at SELI, what with visiting SELI Young Writers club schools and  giving daily Business Writing mentoring classes, an in-servicing we offer to businesses and organizations in Freetown.

In mid-March, we traveled to the Koinadugu District in the northeast of Sierra Leone on a trip made possible by support from Edward Davies & Associates Consulting Engineers Ltd. One of the things we do there is to check up on the progress of the Kuranko Karan (shown here), a mother tongue adult literacy class in Dankawalie Village. We have nothing but praise for this group, that meets three times a week from 8-9:00 pm after a full day's work and was asking for Books II and III of their text. We have been able to send them thanks to the resources of The Institute of Sierra Leone Languages (TISLL) who also trained the teachers (in the back row in orange and white shirts) and are monitoring the program. On its own, the group hopes to revise the text, as well as compile a Kuranko reader: they will soon need Kuranko books to read, and they are very hard to find!

We also go to the Northern Province to visit our writing clubs.

We found most of the schools involved in their annual sports competitions, but we talked with the teachers and delivered supplies they'd fallen short of. Here you can see Dankawalie Secondary School's red house (and supporters) heading off for the competitions.

While they had been practicing, I had been working in the school library SELI helped to set up several years ago with a grant from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives and continues to support, mentoring DSS's teacher-librarian in this very rural setting.

Adult Mother-Tongue Literacy Class

The Dankawalie Secondary School Library (in Dankawalie, Sengbe Chiefdom, Koinadugu District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone) is a community library. One of its community services is offering an adult mother tongue literacy class in Kuranko.

I was glad to have the opportunity to meet with 7/10 of the class this week. Just for me, they gathered at the odd hour of 8 am on Monday morning before they headed out to their farms where they are harvesting rice and planting groundnuts. Although most of the class members have had a Koranic education (and can therefore read and write in Arabic) they have had no formal schooling so cannot read and write in the Roman script. Their days are already full with all the work they do.

Although Kuranko is not one of the mother-tongue languages The Institute of Sierra Leone Languages is currently working with, SELI arranged for two teachers from DSS to be included in TISLL's literacy-teacher training workshop in May, 2013. In June, the class began, and you can see from these short videos here that there have been results! TISLL monitors and certificates the program, and is a wonderful collaborative partner.

This SELI Heritage Writers program is expanding and needs your support. The current members keep pointing out that the materials (originally written in the '70's and revised in the '90s) are outdated and would like to revise them. New members of the community want to join the class as beginners. Some current members are ready to go on to Book Two. Although the members pay, by installment, a cost price for the books, the supplies need to be bought and brought to the village.  The two teachers have been doing this work without any stipend at all as encouragement. When class members have completed Book Two we would like to a) encourage those interested to go on to second language learning in Krio or English, and b) start them into a writing workshop where they can record their stories, which will become Kuranko readers to add to the DSS Library collection if we can pay to have them printed. The two teachers, Mr. Balla M. Kargbo and Mr. Alusine H. Kamara, would like to see the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology accept appeals for new Sierra Leonean languages to be added to the current four examination languages at junior secondary level.

If you are able to make a small contribution toward this Heritage Writers project, please click on the DONATE button to the right!

See for yourself!

Are you thinking of supporting SELI's work? Or have you already donated? We've come across a wonderful video by Kewulay Kamara that will help you see what Sierra Leone is like, and the difference between urban and rural Sierra Leone. You will see children from our Young Writers club in Dankawalie Secondary School dancing in a community event on the school grounds. The title is Ta Boh M'bareh Dankawalie. See it for yourself! 

Non-formal Education

Let's highlight again the point made about non-formal education in the last post.

Especially when we read articles such as Steve Bradshaw's "Sierra Leone's School-Time Blues," we realize what an important need there is for non-formal education and community schools in Sierra Leone. Children need to be taught in their own context, with parents (whether educated or not) playing an assertive role in keeping conditions safe and conducive to learning.