COMMUNITY ACTION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVE.SL

Our solution addresses gender discrimination against girls and young women in both formal and informal learnings. In Sierra Leone,women and girls are not given equal opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills for self-empowerment which hugely disturbs their personal growth and development. Our approach is to provide enabling environment for both girls and young women where girls from poor families will receive supports that will ensure their enrolment and retention in schools.Also, young out of school women, especially, teenage mothers,will be supported by the project to register into various vocational skills training centres and acquire practicable skills such as tailing, carpentry,Village Savings and Loan (VSL) skills, with a mentorship that will brand to successful entrepreneurs.This solution will positively impact the lives of girls and young women by enabling them to fully participate in formal and informal learnings and create employment for themselves, which will eventually lead to sustainable development.  

We are particularly focused to increase the level of girls and young women's involvement in both formal and informal learnings. As a result of poverty, girls and young women are always taking the back seat, with little or participation in decision making relating to learning and community development. Poverty forces girls to become child mother before their 15th year birthday. In Kebbietown community,80% of girls drop out of school before their 18th birthday. Only 0.1% had ever succeeded entering to tertiary institutions and 6.8% of out of school young women to vocational skills training institutions as a result of poverty and bad government policy which refused pregnant girls the rights to take external examination or attend school. To prevent this, the project aims to provide capacities for both girls and young women in the areas of supports to primary and secondary school enrolments, as well as the placement of young out of school women to vocational training centres to acquire skills    

The solution will provide supports and motivation to the most vulnerable girls who parents cannot afford to send them to school and learn skills and build their confidence and fully participate in formal learning activities in their various communities. Similarly so, the solution will support the out of school young women by enrolling them into vocational skills training centres to learn different skills that will enable their inclusive participation into the informal learning opportunities in their various local communities. The technology involves in doing this, will be community based programming, where learners are given the adequate opportunities to remain in their local environment and acquire skills that will be used to manage their own different community problems. This can be achieved by supporting the young learners/graduates with a start-up, coaching and mentorship to accelerate their entrepreneurship endeavours. The solution will also consider parental involvement as a major innovation to ensure the enrolment and retention of those girls which the project will benefit.

Our solution envisages to serve the most vulnerable, deprived, underserved and marginalized girls and out of school young women who parents cannot afford to provide basic educational supports to fast-track their learning in the formal schools. On the other hands, the solution will address the problem of out of school young women who have dropped out of school due to poverty and are now over-aged to be re-enrolled into formal school and complete their learning. This development will aid their enrolment into several vocational skills training institutes and help them acquire the indispensable acquaintance and skills that will renovate their lives to prosperous community businesspersons and enable their full contribution into informal learnings in their various indigenous communities and the country at large. Impactfully, the solution will increase the enrolment of girls into both primary and secondary schools which will directly lead to increase in literacy rate among girls. Again, venture will rebrand the lives of many out of school young women, especially those engage in sexual works as mean of their survival. Generally, the intervention will ensure women and girls empowerment which will ultimately lead to sustainable development in Serra Leone. 

This solution will provide the most vulnerable girls and young women the necessary supports for their enrolment into primary, secondary for girls and vocational training institutions for young women, especially teenage mothers to learn diverse skills and warrant girls enrolment and retention in both primary and secondary to improve on the literacy rate among girls and enable their participation in both formal and informal learning. The target beneficiaries are girls from the most vulnerable and hard to reach communities, while the young women will be the child mothers that have dropped out of schools over the years due to poverty. 

Many organizations including Plan International, Save the Children, IRC etc invest in girl child education. However, the investments have been mostly supporting those girls through government, which is very fine. However, most of these supports are limited to reach children in the most deprived communities. As a result, children living in those challenging environment are left marginalized and deprived. Also, most of the humanitarian aid workers in Sierra Leone have little or no business with young women who have dropped out of school as a result of poverty and some harmful cultural practices. Some young women get pregnancy before their 15th birthday, some are forced to marry to older men as a mean of their family to survive. This category of young women are totally vulnerable and many get their daily bread through prostitution, which have negative implications to their health, as many are being infected by HIV/Aid with other STDs.The attention of most of the service providers are not capturing the problems faced by poor girls and out of school young women living in the most derived and underserved communities. Our solution is not only targeting to provide these young women livelihood skills and ensure poor girls enrolment into primary and secondary schools, but will similarly refurbish their lives by ensuring them through private enterprise ventures for the women  and increase literacy rate  among  poor girls living in those disadvantaged localities in  the part of the country.

For the young kids, our solution envisages to introduce mobile Application technology where learners access learning materials for all subjects through the application. Many other country developing countries in Africa and Asia are currently using this technology to advance the learning of the kids and help boost their literacy and numeracy. Sierra Leone is the among poor countries that hasn’t tried this technology yet. For the Young women, our solution will provide community based programming where vocational skills training opportunities will be taken to the doors of these women and encourage them to make use of the opportunities. Parents and community stakeholders who show less interest in girl child education will be involved in our solution to ensure stringent measures are taken to enforce community by-laws that will protect girls from being forcefully placed into marriages while still in school or below the required age. The young out of school women will be given the opportunities to convert their acquired skills into income generating activities to ensure their economic sustainability and livelihood springiness.  

Mobile school application is not common in Sierra Leone but is widely used by other countries such as Ghana, Bangladesh, Rwanda and other advanced countries. For instance, the Volunteer Service Overseas School mobile Application is which is used in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh to help teach the Rohingan Refugee children, helps easily to spread equal opportunity to learning. Introducing this technology will correspondingly benefit those helpless girls to speed up learning and catch up with other privileged children in and around their communities. On other hands, the implementation of community bye-laws through community engagement and formation of committees at community level, will leverage the level of girls’ drop out from schools. Empowering the young women with both skills and start up, is define as special and unique innovation for their transformation, as such hardly happen in that part of the country. Please search for VSO School APP on play store

Our Theory of Change starts with ‘the problem’ of child marriage

 Empowering girl 

Strategies: For girls to refuse marriage, they have to understand and ‘own’ their rights, and be able to support their own life plans. A wide range of programmes should invest in girls and women

Outcome:Girls and women have the opportunity to develop solidarity with one another through peer groups and collective actionAlternative economic, social roles for girls and women exist and are valued and creased access of married and unmarried girls to health, education, economic, and legal support

MOBILISE FAMILIES & COMMUNITIES:

Strategies : Families and communities and the broader cultural attitudes that influence these groups’ attitudes and behaviour. Work together to address these deep-rooted values and traditions by engaging families, communities, young people and the media to change attitudes and behaviours related to child marriage

Outcome:Families, communities and young people are increasingly aware of the harmful impact of child marriage and alternatives available.Families, communities and young people value alternative options to child marriageFamilies and communities prefer not to marry girls as children

PROVIDE SERVICES

Strategies:There are many structural barriers that can push girls into child marriage and prevent them from accessing support once they are married. Provide services across sectors that reinforce one another and are tailored to the specific needs of girls at risk of marriage and married girls.

Outcome:Increased access to safe, quality formal and non-formal education for girls.Increased access to health services for adolescent girls, married and unmarried.Health and education services establish protocols on identifying the warning signs and addressing the risks of child marriage.Improved economic security for girls.Increased commitment of programmes to prevent and mitigate risk of child marriage

ESTABLISH & IMPLEMENT LAWS & POLICIES

Strategies:Governments should demonstrate their commitment to end child marriage by developing strong laws and policies, and putting the money and institutions in place to enforce them.

Outcome:National laws reflect international and regional human rights standards.Robust legal framework that sets 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage and protects girls' and women's rights Governments develop po

Our Solution will target 1000 girls  and 900 out of school young women at first. Currently, we do volunteer service works, by enagaging communities with advocacy to restore the rights and dignity of those girls and young women. We are currently looking for funding to practically effect our goals.

Our short time goal is to secure funding and ensure the enrolment of these vulnerable girls and young women into both formal and informa learning institutions, move those on the streets that are living in risky life. Our long time goal is to :

• Ensure that girls and women are better protected from violence and exploitation that affect their decision making in both formal and informal learnng .
• Make sure  that community, traditional and religious leaders take grater actions to end child marriage and realise the rights of women and girls.
• That community,traditional and religious leaders increasingly support and take ownership in taking alternative roles for girls beyond marriages which locks girls education.
• Ensure that men and boys increasingly take action to end child marriage that affects girls potential and futures. 

As a team, we have the human capacity or resources with good initiatives to address some of the problems that affect girls and young women's educations in both formal and informal ways but we our team totally lacks the funding and logistics to scale up our plan. 

One of the ways is through responding to a call like this, to scure funding that can give us the ways to effectively respond those challenges face by girls and young women and help build better society for women and girls now and forever.

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Our team have 9 full time vulunteer staff and 5 community Based girls and women advocate volunteer but others are showing interest to join us.

Our team has  five university graduates in various disciplines such as Education, Sociology, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration and Human Resources Management. A good number of the team members have worked for National and International non governmental organizations for number of years with good experiences that will adequately help us  deliver results for this solution as expected.As community based workers, we understand what these communities need and how to provide those needs to ensure sustainable development. Giving these girls and young women the required formal and informal education will not only help to transform their lives as individual, but equally help to reshape  their various communities by increasing women and girls participation in decision making that are relevant to nation building . We are in the good books of the community stakeholders who are always in readiness to work with us to address pressing community issues like those currently faced by the these girls and young women .So we are prepared to deliver good results to create  positive and desirable change in the lives of our beneficiaries and the country at large.

We are  in partnership with:

•   District Council, 
• Ministry of Social Welfare and Ministry of Education. 
• City Council.
• Global Village Network.
• Youth Council 

1. Our Value Proposition : We provide inclusive quality formal and informal learning opportunities for the most deprived and marginalized girls and out of school young women with coaching and mentorship and drive girls and women to acquire the best skills that will enable them to fully paricipate in decision making that matters for their personal growth and the development of their communities and their country at large. 

2.Our Beneficiaries: Our beneficiaries are girls between the ages 10-16 and out of school young women between the age from 17-25 years who parents cannot afford to support their learning ( for girls) and those who drop out from school due to poverty and other harmful cultural practices.

3. Our Service: We provide formal and informal education for the underprevileged population that will enble them to fully participate in decision making processes.

4. How do we Provide this Service for our Beneficiaries.We provide this by facilitating the enrolment of underserved girls and women into both formal and informal learning institutions for a period  and provide the necessary supports to help design their futures.

5.Why are we providing this service? He are providing this because our beneficiaries derserve the same opportunities as other in the cities and town or those from the wealthy families but because of poverty, they are left out, discriminated, marginalized which is very unfriendly for their futures.

6. Partners:  

• Ministry of Education 
• Ministry of Social Welfare.
• Ministry of Youth Affairs.
• Local Councils- ( City& District)
• Global Village Network

As non-profit making organization, our fanancila sustainability depends on donations from the stakeholders,Grants,and individaul membership conributions.