REPORT: work visit to Sierra Leone January 2010
Daan from JOY the Netherlands visited Lakka early this year to see the progress that we are making. Due to a lack of funding our Nursery School project has been delayed by a full year. However, after seeing the results of the last couple of months of work, we are now certain that the school will be opened for the 2010/2011 academic year, starting in August. The toilets funded by foundation AOMW are completed as is the roofing, plastering, painting and the doors and windows.
See here what beauty now can be seen on arrival in Lakka village:
Things left to do are the cooping, the outside terrace, guttering and furniture. Since we re-established a friendship between the Godelinde School in the Netherlands and the Nursery and Primary School in Sierra Leone, we are pretty certain that we will have enough funding to complete this school before August this year.
The management of the school was one of our mayor discussion topics for this year. We pushed the Anglosaxican St. Matthias Church for support by paying a visit to the bishop in Freetown. Unfortunately we are still waiting for their answer... Different parties from within the Lakka community itself have (obviously) also grown interest in the school. We are now looking into a way to combine all these interests into something that is most beneficial to the quality of education and the maintenance of the Nursery School.
Although our projects are focused on improving education with a sustainable approach, we cannot help it to bring something small as a present for the children. This year we brought pens and toys that were donated to us by generous supporters. We also set up a pilot with the local hospital in providing glasses for an affordable price. This was a huge success since a pair of new glasses in town is way to expensive, but the demand and necessity in small villages like Lakka is actually really high. The money generated by this project is used to pay for the hospital's water and electricity bill.
 |
 |
 |
Toys for the Lakka children |
Pens for the Lakka children |
Glasses for the Lakka and Ogoo Farm community |
We also paid a visit to the Primary School and observed the damage that has been done by a tropical storm last rainy season. The winds have swept away the roofs from about two classrooms and half of the hallways. The rains caused heavy damage to the ceilings as well as the walls, the shutters and some of the furniture. Most alarmingly though is the erosion around the school building. Especially at the front and sides of the building the foundation is already visible for about 20 centimeters and is becoming more fragile every rainy season. We urgently need to repair the school's foundation in order to prevent the building from collapsing! We urgently need your support to renovate the Primary School in Lakka!
|  |
| Damage at the Primary School caused by tropical storms during the annual rainy season. | |
This year we obvisouly missed the presence of our friend and collegue Adbul who passed away last June. JOY is still standing strong though in the community and more and more people start giving their support in various ways. We have now several volunteers in Lakka who take care after the children that are sponsored though our Give Knowlegde Programme. They are monitoring and supporting these children in order to go to school.
 |
| From left to right: Samuel, Daan and Ibrahim from JOY. |
Our next visit to Lakka will be in October of this year. Together with the headmastress of the Godelinde School from the Netherlands we will celebrate the opening of the new Nursery School!