Report from the rehabilitation and expansion of the school in Bissau.
Bonthe, Sierra Leone
SLCBO’s filosofi : Help people help themselves
Sierra Leone Community Based Organisation (SLCBO) works for the disadvantaged and poor people of Sierra Leone. Our overall goal is, through collaboration with SLCBO, they can work themselves out of poverty.
A big thank you to our many generous donors. Without you, this project would not have been possible.
Thanks to:
- Lions Club Oslo/Lilleaker
- Rune Borknes
- Fusa Sokneråd
- Strandvik Transport og Maskin
- Terje Boasson og Eva Schøyen
- Framo Fusa AS
- Solar uten grenser
This has enabled us to arrange school uniforms for the students. In Sierra Leone, it is mandatory for all students to wear school uniforms. It has also increased the number of students from 200 to 225, as the school uniform represents pride and encourages education. This also helps families send more children to school as we can help provide the children with school uniforms for free.
Part of your contribution has been used to purchasing school supplies such as books and stationery, which in turn has helped families who cannot afford to buy these themselves. They send their great gratitude for your contribution to their children’s future.
Previously, we have rehabilitated and expanded our school in Bissau. The walls of the original building have been repaired. We have expanded the school with two new classrooms. The school now contains five classrooms and a staff room. We have also installed new roof on the new building and repaired the roof on the oldest part of the school. Previously the inside of the school had floor of mud. We have now build floors in the classrooms and in the staff room.
There is still a lot of work to do before we can call this round complete. We want to paint the interior plaster in all the rooms. Then the classrooms need chalkboards. We also need to carve new desks to have enough for all the classrooms.
There are five villages that are adjacent To the school. All the residents there are very happy with the school. Approximately 170 children are enrolled in the school in their immediate area. Alternative schooling is in the main town of Bonthe, which is a 3 hour walk away. Two of the oldest students at the school in Bissau have now started secondary school in Bonthe. We are very proud of that!
With support from Lions clubs and private donors, we have previously distributed lamps to the local population. The lamps are of great importance in an area where darkness comes already between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM. To date, we have distributed approximately 500 lamps in total in several villages.
We have also built student toilets, a well, and a charging station for phones and lamps right next to the school.
Our organization SLCBO works according to the philosophy «Help People Help Themselves». In practice, this means that we support the projects with financial resources while the local population carries out the work. This provides great motivation to complete the projects. In addition, we reduce costs. We manage to build our wells for 25,000,- NOK. It is not uncommon that such wells have a cost of 50,000,- NOK. in other projects in other countries in Africa.
Our organization has virtually no administrative costs. All support goes directly to the projects.
See www.slcbo.org and www.facebook.com/slcbo for more information about the organization and our work.