Building Sierra Leone’s Future
Helping children recover from trauma and learn in the classroom
Last month, I had the honor of spending two weeks with IRC’s education staff in Bo district, Sierra Leone. They are an impressive team, many of whom have been with the IRC for over a decade. This team of educators has worn different hats to serve their communities. Brima, who became my window into IRC’s education programs in Sierra Leone, has been a teacher trainer with the IRC for years. During the Ebola outbreak, he fulfilled another need: community mobilizing and awareness building.
Communities did not believe in the Ebola regulations, and were therefore not following them. He worked to ensure they reported any death, illness or suspected cases, and avoided hosting strangers during the outbreak. He was incredibly successful in this role — only one cased emerged in the chiefdom he was covering. Even after being “Ebola free” for over a year, you can see signs on the street advising the reader to not stigmatize the child who survived Ebola. How can these children adequately participate in the education system if they are being ostracized by the community?
Brima, known as Keke — which means “father” — is now the Program Manager for a new education project — the 3EA (Education in Emergencies: Evidence for Action) project. It builds on learnings from a “boutique” literacy program — Le Wi Ol Lan (LWOL, or Let We All Learn). The program supports untrained and unqualified teachers with training, coaching, and ongoing professional development in literacy and pedagogy. What sets 3EA apart from LWOL, and the purpose of my visit, is the addition of a social-emotional learning (SEL) component. More specifically, this year we are integrating mindfulness activities into the classroom. Mindfulness has been shown to decrease stress, anxiety and increase calmness, ability to focus and regulate emotions. Based on the students’ needs, the team thought that the benefits of SEL would address the needs of Sierra Leonean children who suffer from the aftermath of the civil war that ended in 2002 and the direct losses they experienced as a result of the Ebola outbreak.
During the first week of my trip, Brima took me to visit the schools we work in. Lower classes were packed, upper classes sparsely populated. Though students were mostly in uniforms, many looked like they were ready to be thrown out. Teaching and learning materials consisted of a blackboard, some chalk, and a few notebooks and pens. In some cases, teachers could not keep order in the classroom. In class one, I witnessed a teacher yelling at a group of 6 year olds who were giggling. In another class, the teacher did not even notice two children fighting in the back of the room. Many students do not eat breakfast before school, so they are hungry until the school day ends at 2 pm.
In front of these pupils was one single teacher per class, though in each school we visited at least one teacher was absent due to illness, training, or to taking on another job because of a need to earn additional income. Many were not trained, qualified or paid by the government. They are volunteers who receive inconsistent stipends based on what funds the community can pull together. Community teachers use the methods they experienced as children — the outdated methods of call and response, and rote memorization. They, too, have been impacted by the Ebola epidemic. Everyone in Bo lost someone close to them. What I saw was a community riled with the memory of civil war, epidemic and violence.
My perception of Sierra Leone changed vastly in my second week during the Mindfulness Training of Trainers (ToT). The participants were 20 ebullient trainers from the IRC, Ministry of Education, and a handful of teachers and head-teachers. They were fast and eager learners, who quickly caught on to the purpose of integrating mindfulness into the classroom — to build the students’ capacity to cope with their overwhelming stress, to heal and to improve their focus and ability to learn. On the second day of training, one of the staff said she was already using mindfulness in her own life. Just that morning, she had felt anxious about being late. Instead of yelling at the motorbike driver, she took a few moments to calm herself using a mindfulness practice — slow belly-breathing — that we learned the day before. Others said they were excited to practice mindfulness in their own lives, to share it with the teachers and to see the impact it might have on the students.
Mindfulness will not erase the memory of civil war, nor will it bring back those who lost their lives from Ebola. It will not cure the hunger, poverty and rampant violence that students face outside of the classroom. What it can do is provide a tool for teachers and students to cope, heal and thrive; to learn and grow stronger within and outside the school.
If we can do our part, and provide these children with quality education, and the ability to heal and grow stronger from their experiences, I hope that one day they might grow up to be like Keke; a man who has dedicated his life to working for the IRC and ensuring that thousands of children go to schools where teachers care about their students’ well-being, learning and development.
