EducAid today: 16th October 2014

Since the first case was confirmed in Sierra Leone on 25^th May, the swift acceleration of the Ebola virus across the country and Western Africa has seemingly caught both governments and the international community off-guard. Ebola has claimed around 1183 lives in Sierra Leone, and 4493 world-wide, and has one of the lowest survival rates of all communicable diseases in the world.

With an ever-increasing speed of transmission, and a panicked population, the President’s State House in Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency on 30^th July[1]. The state of emergency prohibited the public gathering of more than 5 people for anything other than religious meetings or Ebola sensitization groups. As a product of this, schools themselves were closed all around the country for what is the foreseeable future.

EducAid’s holistic program of care extends beyond the traditional bounds of education. Due, in part, to the severe effects of the civil war that ended in 2002, many of our students do not have a home to return to during the summer holidays. We typically accommodate between half and two thirds of our 3000+ students and provide food, shelter, pastoral, and medical care throughout the year. Beyond this, we have a body of full-time staff members that are also often permanent residents. Due to this fact, we still have a resident population on our sites throughout Sierra Leone.

To give you a clearer picture of the position we are in, we have collected some figures to show you exactly the challenges that we are facing in the country.

	Lumley	Magbeni	Rolal	Rogbere	Maronka	4 Ms	Total
Number of Students & Staff Week ending 12/10/2014
Male Staff	32	10	26	14	13	19	114
Female Staff	8	2	3	5	6	5	29
Male Students	19	20	36	36	23	0	134
Female Students	21	12	12	17	21	0	83
Total	80	44	77	72	63	24	360

We are happy with the ratio of staff to students on all of our sites. We are able to contain the most vulnerable members of the programme, our students, with the strong staff presence. The numbers break down like this:

	Lumley	Magbeni	Rolal	Rogbere	Maronka	4 Ms	Overall
Number of Students & Staff Week ending 12/10/2014
Staff	40	12	29	19	19	24	90
Students	40	32	48	53	44	0	134
Ratio	1:1	1:3	3:5	2:5	2:5	n/a	2:3

There are several misgivings and rumours that are in circulation around Ebola - something that we will tackle in later blog posts – however, the critical point about Ebola transmission is that it can only be spread by symptomatic carriers of the disease. In other words, if someone is displaying obvious signs of the contagion (i.e. high fever, red eyes, purple blotches/rashes, vomiting, internal and external bleeding), they are then contagious. That contagion can be carried through the exchange of bodily fluids. If you would like more information on the contagion, read this Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) post: Facts About Ebola, or Dr. Bausch discussing the situation in Sierra Leone: PODCAST: Get your facts straight about Ebola.

The potency of the virus makes the proximity of known Ebola cases to our locations extremely important, so we have collected data from our site coordinators in Sierra Leone to report it to you.

	Lumley	Magbeni	Rolal	Rogbere	Maronka	4 Ms
Distance	0 miles	¼ mile	3 houses away	4-5 miles	1 ½  miles	5+ miles

The proximity of the virus makes it a very real threat. Lumley, our school in Freetown, is in the thick of the outbreak. With cramped urban conditions and poor sanitary situations surrounding the school, the staff and students have to be extremely cautious. 4-5 miles away from Rogbere is Waterloo, a major junction on the Masiaka-Yonibana Highway linking Freetown to the south and east of the country, and there they have recorded a huge number of cases. In Rolal, Ebola is in the village; the house has been contained but the threat is present. In order to combat this threat, we have implemented a number of strict protocols for the protection of our staff and students. We will be explaining our protocol in detail in tomorrow’s blog post.

One point that is seldom documented in the mainstream western media is the ever-increasing difficulty of getting on with a normal life in Sierra Leone. We are faced with all sorts of new challenges when facing a country in quarantine and crisis. For example, the cost of living has increased dramatically as the supply of food has been hit by travel restrictions of quarantine, markets have been closed, and imports stopped or delayed. Rice, for example, has increased from 120,000 leones to 160,000 leones.

In addition to the spiraling cost of food and other essentials, Ebola has necessarily consumed healthcare centres in Sierra Leone. What previously could have been a perfectly manageable illness, such as Malaria, is transformed in to a life-threatening situation. Not only is there an access issue, the symptoms of Malaria appear much like those of the early stages of Ebola. Any sufferer of the former is potentially stigmatised with the curse of Ebola and, unless identified soon after that, is condemned to share the same fate.

Speaking to Nature, Estrella Lasry of Médicins sans Frontières explained that, “routine health care has collapsed during the outbreak, because both patients and providers have shunned clinics for fear of infection. As a result, tens of thousands of people could die from treatable causes…those include complications of childbirth; trauma and other acute conditions requiring surgery, causes such as diarrhoeal disease, respiratory viruses, and especially malaria.”[2]

To counteract this disturbing reality appearing in our schools, and as part of our preventative protocol, we have chosen to put all of our residents on to anti-malarial prophylaxis, as well as a bi-weekly dose of Vitamin supplements to fend off the threat of other disease. If we can fend off the threat of Ebola, and can keep ourselves supplied with the necessary resources listed above, we should be able to protect ourselves from Ebola.

What we do have an abundance of, however, is fantastically dedicated, disciplined, and well-trained staff. It is testament to the great work that we have done over the past 15 years that our alumni are now assisting the nation in matters of Ebola emergency. Read our blog post coming out later about Augustine Bundor, an EducAid alumni who studies medicine, who is now leading the line of Ebola detection in Lungi Airport. That post will be with you later today.

This post is the first of a set of weekly updates where we will be bringing you the most important news from in and around our school sites. The EducAid network covers 9 schools across the country. Through our blog we will bring you our stories of how life is inside, and outside of our schools.

Follow our blog at www.educaid.org.uk/news

Like us on facebook: www.facebook.com/EducAidSL

Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EducAidSL

We have 0 full-time employees in the UK, and over 180 in Sierra Leone. Please give generously so that we can continue to build a life for #AfterEbola

Donate Now: https://mydonate.bt.com/afterebola

---

[1] http://www.statehouse.gov.sl/index.php/useful-links/925-address-to-the-nation-on-the-ebola-outbreak-by-his-excellency-the-president-dr-ernest-bai-koroma-july-30-2014

[2] http://www.nature.com/news/ebola-outbreak-shuts-down-malaria-control-efforts-1.16029

Ebola & Our Response

At EducAid we have been fighting to protect ourselves from Ebola from the very beginning. We are in the fortunate position that the majority of our school compounds are generally self-contained and stable. Under the guidance of our Country Director and Trustees, the staff have implemented strict protocols that restrict the movement on to and off of our property – limiting them to those that are absolutely essential. Now that the streets are nearly deserted for fear of further contamination, and the fact that Ebola is only spread from symptomatic carriers of the virus, we have consolidated our position enough to consider the next step.

Errands that are likely to lead to increased risk of exposure – those via public transport or to congested areas – are taken under extreme caution with long sleeves and gloves mandatory. We have also managed to stockpile our food, water, and gasoline resources to hold until December. Now we are beginning to prepare ourselves for the even greater challenge of educating and preparing our population for life after Ebola.

This blog is the beginning of a series that will keep our donors informed of how we are tackling Ebola on the ground in the short, mid, and long-term. We will be documenting our efforts to consolidate the protection of our schools, how we are striving to continue the education of our students that are not currently under our care, and our strategy for dealing with life after Ebola. Our network of schools and staff around the country puts us in a good position to describe what it is really like to live with Ebola in Sierra Leone.

These are the stages of our program to fight Ebola:

Stage 1: Protocol – protecting our school sites by ensuring that our students and staff are educated in the best ways of avoiding contagion. Implementing strict protocol on travel and behaviour.

Stage 2: Education – delivering learning from a distance. We will be making and distributing educational materials so that the children currently not allowed to re-join our schools are not left behind. We will also be empowering them with the correct information to make the right decisions regarding Ebola within their family homes.

Stage 3: Post-Ebola preparation – It is the responsibility of organisations like ours to ensure that our students and staff are prepared sufficiently, and to help them avoid any social or civil upheaval in this vulnerable country. From the orphans of Ebola to the education of the wider population, we must be ready.

Our program centres education at it’s core. We believe that the education of young men and women is essential to: unlock human potential, overcome poverty, improve wellbeing, build democracy, and to providing the cornerstone for stable development. We are sure that, with the assistance of the international community, Sierra Leone will be able to isolate and contain Ebola, and we know it is our mission to be there in the aftermath.

Aside from detailing our efforts in this blog, we will also be bringing you more insightful information in to the perception of the Sierra Leonean population on a range of subjects, and trying to combat some of the myths that still exist around Ebola within the Western World.

Follow our blog at www.educaid.org.uk/news

Visit our fundraising page at https://mydonate.bt.com/events/afterebola

Like us on facebook at www.facebook.com/EducAidSL

Follow Miriam on Twitter from www.twitter.com/EducAidSL

The EducAid network covers 9 schools across the country. Through our blog we will bring you our stories of how life is inside, and outside of the schools.

We have 0 full-time employees in the UK, and over 180 in Sierra Leone. Together we educate over 3000 students, and we’re building for a life #AfterEbola

The Thoughtful Sierra Leonean

EducAid is working on the production of educational radio programmes for distribution across the country while the ebola State of Emergency keeps schools shut and children away from their studies.
If we have learned nothing else during this latest crisis, we have learned that the lack of basic education has left the population so terribly vulnerable once again.  We will continue to be vulnerable while education is neglected.
As a key part of our radio programmes we have decided to have a daily message to 'The Thoughtful Sierra Leonean'.  Our hope is, of course, that as the messages go out every listener will want to place themselves in that category and will choose a moment of education 'of the heart' while educating their minds.

Our logo features young Abu Bakarr Kargbo, known everywhere as STG (Stop The Gang!). STG is the head-boy in EducAid Lumley and has retrieved himself from the street, living on the city dump with a daily menu of gambling, violence and theft.  He is proud now to be a #thoughtful Sierra Leonean and to be a role model for other youngsters.  'If I can, so can you,' he invites.
So far, we have recorded messages around themes, quotes and proverbs such as:
'We not me!'
'If I succeed alone, I fail.'
'Love and do as you will.'
'Knowledge without wisdom is like water poured on sand.'
'When there is no enemy within, the enemy from outside cannot hurt you.'
......and many more.

If you have any suggested messages do let us have them.  Please send to miriam@educaid.org.uk

If you would like to know more about our work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, please go to www.educaid.org.uk

Please go to https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/educaidsierraleone to make a donation if you would like to support the radio programme effort to reduce the impact of the crisis on young people seeking to pursue an education,

Photo Exhibition -

Please do come along and bring everyone you can.



It will be a great event.



Beautiful photographs and inspiring speakers, followed by drinks and a grand auction.



Thursday, 23rd October 2014



6:30pm for 7pm


St Michael's Church,
Chester Square
London
SW1 9HH

£20 recommended donation on entry or online: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/educaid/186452

We look forward to seeing you.

If you would like to know more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, go to www.educaid.org.uk 

Education on the move with EducAid!

So....since the declaration of the State of Emergency, there is a complete ban of all gatherings of more than five people except for going to church, or the mosque or ebola sensitisation meetings. One of the most significant consequences of this, is that schools and colleges cannot open. Even summer school classes were cancelled throughout the summer on pain of arrest for teachers that tried to carry on.
When the outbreak started, it seemed that ebola was a distant, far away thing from the South and East of Sierra Leone.  EducAid only operates, for now, in the North and West so by rights we should have all been safe. Quickly though it became clear that this was more than a localised problem and cases were being discovered all over the country.  No proper isolation or clamp down was put in place for the first cases and soon nearly all districts were affected.  Although, the vast vast majority of the population will never contract the disease, we will all be affected by the consequences of it and in order to keep damage to a minimum, we have to avoid gathering and unnecessary movement.
Our 3000+ young people who should be back in school this week, can't be.  We have only a few dozen on each site, those who did not go for holidays, and they are the only ones who can progress with their studies.
School teachers the world over know how much work they have to do, after a six week summer holiday, to get their pupils back up to speed when school opens in the autumn. Now, in Sierra Leone, we are faced with a likely six months of no school and it may well be more.  How devastating to an already terribly weak education system!
EducAid managed to organise a whole staff workshop last week, with police clearance, so that we could a. inform ourselves about the realities of ebola and, indeed, some other common killer illnesses that we are surrounded by and b. to set ourselves personal study targets and to organise teams to work on upgrading our learning materials.
We have decided too, that, if we want to take ourselves as a significant organisation in Sierra Leone, then we need to look at what we can do to help more broadly than just to keep ourselves safe in a corner.
As an organisation, we are not skilled to go and help treat sick people or even to go beyond the basics in terms of sensitisation.  What we are good at is delivering high quality education programmes and helping troubled youth to find a home and a family from which basis they can build positive lives. Accordingly, we have decided firstly to propose to the necessary authorities to provide a home for some of the orphans left by parents who have died of ebola, in particular the children of health workers who have died in the front line trying to save others.  We are currently in liaison with the authorities in Kailahun to get health clearance certificates for some of these children so we can bring them to live with us.  These youngsters have often had to watch helplessly as their parents died in terrible conditions and to add to their pain, they are now being shunned as potential disease carriers. We want to help them be able to rebuild their lives within a loving family.  They will also be able to pick up their studies and gain a good education.
Secondly, we are starting to produce educational radio programmes to be broadcast as far and wide as we can make happen.  This will enable young people to continue their studies even from home while they are unable to gather for classes.  There has been a very positive response from education leaders as well as the commitment from Radio Africell to disseminate the programmes.
In times of crisis, it is horribly dismal to be unable to contribute meaningfully in anyway.  We are in the very fortunate position of being able to do something concrete and positive.
I am also in the very fortunate position of being part of a great team of committed and hard-working Sierra Leonean staff who have immediately responded to the opportunity to do something to help.
These are difficult days and Sierra Leone, which suffers daily already from so many traumas: many other killer diseases, poor institutions, corruption and so on, is now once again in the middle of a crisis that will devastate its economy, its education system and more.  In EducAid, we are trying to position ourselves to minimise the damage in what ways we can.
If you are in a position to support, please do so.  One of the easiest ways of doing so is to click on this link and make a donation: https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/educaidsierraleone
Thank you for your generosity!

If you would like to know more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young people, please go to www.educaid.org.uk