By Mohamed Sankoh
The Catholic Relief Service (CRS) through the support of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), United States Embassy, Caritas Sierra Leone and the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) has renovated the Roman Catholic Community Primary School at ‘Bendukoro, Dian Chiefdom, and the Wesleyan Catholic Primary School at Bafodia in Wara Wara Chiefdom, Koinadugu District.

The schools, which were renovated under the project (Fiscal Year 2022-2025) “All Pekin for Lan”, were the 5th phase of the McGovern-Dole programme as Sierra Leone aims to improve literacy of school-age children and increase the use of health and dietary practices by building teachers and school administrators’ skills and knowledge.

It also improves teachers’ attendance and access to teaching and learning materials, provides school infrastructure with Wash facilities, and reduces illness related absenteeism in schools. The project also focuses on pupils’ attendance and completion by providing meal to reduce hunger and inattentiveness so as to improve nutritional status.

The phase 5 of this project further seeks to building on sustainable gains from previous phases and strengthening the capacity of National School Feeding Secretariat at national and community levels with focus on structures such as the Mothers Support Groups, School Management Committee, Teachers and School Administrators thereby ensuring that community members, especially women, adopt the habit of savings to support their children’s education.

The project has also supported the review and adoption of a school feeding policy and feasibility study on ‘’Home grown school feeding’’ thereby developing a school garden that will support the school feeding programme.

Expressing her impression about the two communities visited, the Vice President of Catholic Relief Service (CRS), Michele Gilfillan, said she was impressed by the two communities for owning the school feeding programme and showing solidarity with CRS and its partners. She ensured that part of their goals is to inculcate the centre system sustainability and partnership in communities and the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL), and are willing to be part of the “Feed Salone” programme.

The Head Teacher of RC Primary School in Bendukoro, Dian Chiefdom, Charles Alie Kamara, said since the intervention of CRS in 2019, the school started benefitting from the nutritious School Feeding programme. He averred that CRS has rehabilitated the school structure and constructed a food store to enhance safe storage space for food items and that the school enrollment increased from 75 to 178 pupils with 6 teachers.

The Head Teacher furthered that there has been great improvement in the National Primary School Examination (NPSE) as 8 out of 9 pupils that wrote the exam came out with flying colours.

Mr. Kamara concluded that through the CRS ‘Teach for Sierra Leone’ programme, community teachers were capacitated with the diagnostic teaching methodology package to strengthen their teaching methodology and technique.