World Radio Day
Adolescent girls listen to school lessons through the radio at girls’ clubs across Sierra Leone. Photo credit: BRAC.
For World Radio Day, February 13, we’re highlighting a Malala Fund project that we’re proud to support: BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) program.
They’re helping girls in Sierra Leone, one of the countries hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic, continue their education through radio-based education.
Nearly seven months ago, schools were forced to shut their doors to help stop the spread of the disease. But by providing a safe space for girls to tune in to the government’s radio schools program, facilitated by teachers and mentors, girls are still able to learn by listening to math, reading and other lessons through the airwaves — six days a week, four hours a day.
While school is set to reopen in Sierra Leone in late March, 1,200 adolescent girls have been able to study in 2015 thanks in part to Malala Fund donors, who are supporting BRAC’s radio-education efforts.
BRAC’s ELA girls’ clubs, an informal “community classroom”, offers small groups of girls extra radio learning support from peer mentors and female teachers in a safe space. In 40 clubs in Sierra Leone, these girls are also learning critical life skills training focused on Ebola. The clubs are open every day after school for three hours in the afternoon.
The mentors and teachers, working in groups of 7 girls or less, ensure that their pupils comprehend the radio-based lessons and have the workbooks and resources they need to complete their studies. The next day, they have a local teacher to help correct homework.
“It’s been very difficult not going to school because we were learning a lot before the Ebola outbreak. In my community, the radio has helped us greatly,” says Munda, a 17-year-old mentor at one of the girls’ clubs in Sierra Leone. “Before this time we didn’t have the opportunity to get the radio teaching program. But because of them, we’ve been able to learn.”
BRAC is placing particular focus on adolescent girls because they often suffer the most in states of emergencies, including facing heightened risks for early marriage and pregnancy through transactional sex. While the government’s radio schools program provides a means for children to stay engaged in learning, girls are less likely to be encouraged by their families to participate.
Kadiatu, a 19-year-old ELA mentor, has witnessed this firsthand.
“Not everyone is participating in the program. The biggest challenge is when the children aren’t going to school, they have to help with family issues or work,” she says. “Their parents will send them to the farm and you’ll find that they’ll come back late in the afternoon after the lesson has finished. The community needs to give more support to encourage students to attend, especially the older students, and help engage more teachers who can help supervise.”
In the coming months, access to schools in Sierra Leone will still be limited in areas that are recovering from the Ebola crisis. Parents who lost their jobs during the outbreak may no longer have the money to pay school fees for their children. As a result, radio broadcasts will continue even after schools reopen, and BRAC will also continue facilitating the radio lessons out of these girls’ clubs.
Thank you to BRAC for your creative approach in giving girls in Ebola-affected Sierra Leone access to education. And thank you to our donors for helping to put 1,200 girls in BRAC programs.
Want to help too?
Give now to the Malala Fund and help put more adolescent girls in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Jordan, Lebanon and Kenya in secondary school.
