Project Overview
Bread and Water for Africa UK has a proven track record of supporting small, grassroots organisations and projects around Africa. In 2015, Bread and Water for Africa UK partnered with We are the Future School to enhance their existing skills and empower greater success. As a small international charity, BWFA UK work with many organisations to combine their local expertise and their decades of experience in project design and implementation. This year, CHEC was proud to support BWFA’s partnership with We are the Future School in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
It was identified in early 2020 that the We are the Future school was no longer fit for purpose due to the growing number of students. 235 children made up nine student classes, but there were only seven rooms in the school at the time. The toilets were also insufficient for the number of students and teachers to meet the Core Humanitarian Standards. Meanwhile, one of the neighbouring schools did not have the funds or infrastructure for a daily meal programme like the one WAF provide for their students.
Due to this lack of space, only six groups of students were benefiting from a dedicated classroom, whilst two were sharing the dining hall. Each day the two classes were causing each other disruption during lessons and were forced to leave to setup and host lunch.
In response, the We Are the Future School Classroom Expansion Building Project launched in August 2020. The project aimed to reduce overcrowding in the existing classrooms as a requirement to maintain social distances amongst teachers and pupils due to the Covid 19 pandemic. The new classroom building is key to providing the best education and supporting the students with an onsite meal programme, as well as helping the community by also providing meals for the nearby school, CAPE in Freetown.
With the support of funds from CHEC, the school was able to finish and furnish building the new classrooms and four toilets to give students the space to learn without disruption and further improve their health. The transformed space will allow WAF to provide a lunchtime meal in two shifts, one for the We are the Future school and one for neighbouring Cape School, whilst ensuring safety and social distancing measures, as well as keeping them away from dangerous kitchen equipment.
Leave a Reply