OLPCorps ShorelineCommunityCollege SierraLeone.
“OLPCorps_Shoreline Community College_Sierra Leone_Sankoh, Debas”. Team Members: Adhanom Debas and Yabom Sankoh
Our group consists of two people; Adhanom Debas and Yabom Sankoh. We are both over the age of 18 and are attending Shoreline Community College in Seattle WA. Our goal is to help improve the education system for the children living in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone, consist of approximately 5.4 million people, and is situated on the west coast of Africa. Sierra Leone is an extremely low income nation which has recently emerged from a 10 year civil war that cost thousand of children to be maimed, killed, and many of them remained an orphan. During the conflict, schools and other infrastructure were vandalized, looted and burned. Children and youth were unable to attend school as education was grounded to a halt.
Today, Sierra Leone is poised to reclaim its leadership role by providing the gift of education to children and young people. My partner and I want to help the children of Sierra Leone, starting with those in the western area. One of the school located in this area is the St John Primary School. It is a public school that consist of about one thousand children; boys and girls ages six to twelve years old. This project will help us to give out lap tops to the children attending the St. John primary school.
We will be distributing the xo’s laptops to the school and teaching the students how to use the word documents to type their school work and also teach them how to research the internet for information pursuant to their education. We will be distributing the xo’s laptops, to the school in collaboration with our local partner. Every day, Monday through Friday, we will arrive at the school in the morning the same time that the students start classes. We will set up the computers at the school library, where all the teaching will be taken place. We will be doing two set of trainings. During the first set of training, we will be taking two weeks to train the teachers and the local volunteers on the basic information on how to use the laptops. During the second set of training, my partner and I will collaborate with the teachers and local volunteers to teach the students individually on how to use the laptops. After the two set of training is over, We will make it known to the students that we will be available through out the school day to teach them individually during their free time. It will take us about nine to ten weeks to teach each student on how to effectively use these computers for their basic school needs. It will be easier for me and my partner to communicate with the local partners and the children because English is the official language in Sierra Leone.
Our local partner is the Alpha Kamara International Educational Foundation, who has given us representatives in the whole process from distribution, training and follow-up. AKIEF has agreed to do follow-up with the children and the head teacher to ensure that the project continues to have a positive impact on the children’s learning ability, at the same time improve their ability to research the internet for educational purpose
The expenses of our trip, including air fares, transportation, and lodging will cost us about $10,000, which we will be having from the sponsorship of the OLPCorps Africa. My partner and I will be more than happy to go to the St. John Primary School and distribute the xo’s laptops to the children because of the joy and energy the laptops will bring to their learning environment. The distribution of these laptops will brighten the children’s education endeavor. Further more, my partner and I will also be gaining personal experiences from this trip which we will not be able to gain from our classes at school.