By Joanna Howarth | Communications Lead
This update comes with our thanks and gratitude for your generous donation in recent months towards AdvocAid’s literacy and numeracy project. As AdvocAid continues to work alongside the government, Civil Society Organisation’s and International NGOs in Sierra Leone to achieve ‘Zero Ebola’, support from individuals like you is as important as ever, to ensure justice prevails during this time of crisis.
AdvocAid has continued throughout this period to deliver educational services to our beneficiaries, in partnership with EducAid, and since our last report in April, we have delivered classes to 76% of the female detainees currently in Kono, Makeni, Kenema and Freetown Correctional Centre’s. The classes combine literacy and numeracy, and take place within the Correctional Centre’s termly.
These classes are offered to all of the incarcerated girls and women. Considering the conditions these ladies are living in, we see 76% attendance as a success and testament to the hard work of our partner, EducAid, in demonstrating the importance of securing an education. Literacy levels are incredibly low in Sierra Leone, hovering around 43%, with just 9.5% of women aged 25+ having had any secondary education. The women that don’t attend the classes, generally decline due to low morale, or family concerns.
In Freetown, we have seen positive engagement from the manager in charge of the Correctional Centre, positioning these classes as a core component of the weekly activities for detainees, allowing the classes to run each week day. In Makeni, the EducAid teacher has reported that inmates are making good use of the opportunity; they are now pleading for the provision of electricity so that they study at night before going to bed.
Some of the challenges that have confronted our students over the last term include: bed bugs in the prisons preventing them from sleeping well, no protection from the cold (particularly pertinent as Sierra Leone is mid rainy season), exposure to malaria, lack of nutritious meals and strict disciplinary measures from the officers. Sadly, these conditions are not uncommon in Sierra Leone.
The donation that you have made will enable our literacy and numeracy teachers to continue providing classes each week – classes that provide so many of these women with hope. Alongside this, AdvocAid’s additional work will concentrate on holding the Correctional Centres accountable for their actions, providing welfare support to the women including warmer clothing and insecticide to ensure the conditions in detention are humane.
Through AdvocAid and EducAid’s partnership, and with your support, we are strengthening women so that upon release, they are better equipped and have stronger prospects. Rehabilitation is a fundamental component of incarceration, and with very little focus on this from the Correctional Centre’s themselves, it is only via the support of individuals like you, that we can provide this access to opportunity via education.
Our sincere thanks for your donation and support, and we look forward to keeping you up to date with our progress over the coming months. For more information about our work, and day-to-day operations please visit www.advocaidsl.com, www.facebook.com/AdvocAidSierraLeone and www.twitter.com/advocaid.
Once again, thank you from everyone at AdvocAid for your generosity. You really are helping to make women in Sierra Leone stronger.
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By Simitie Lavaly | Executive Director, AdvocAid
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