Miriam Mason-Sesay: The Angel of Freetown

I stumbled across an article from 2008 while researching another blog post. Reading it made me sit, stop, and really consider the impact of what EducAid does. During the course of the year or so that I have been involved with the charity I have been told about the impact of the civil war on Sierra Leone, and I’d read up on the political and social motivations of the civil division, but I had not really read too much about the impact of war on children and the child soldiers. While I knew that the wartime abuse of children is a huge issue in the Sierra Leonean story, and directly affected many of those within the EducAid system, the rarity with which it was mentioned lead me to think that there were just topics that were not discussed, particularly with foreigners. Never, until this article, have I read of these atrocities in such raw terms – torture, child soldiers, cannibalism, and rape.

Miriam acts as the mouthpiece for the powerful and terrifying story of those she had helped struggle through these difficult times. Below I have included some excerpts from the original article below, please be wary that it makes for some tough reading.

“Many of [EducAid’s students] had been child soldiers, kidnapped by rampaging militias, living their childhood in the jungle, decimating villages, mutilating and killing as they went. Many others had been orphaned and displaced, witness to horrors that defy belief.

‘We have ex-combatants, girl mothers and orphans,’ she says. ‘I don’t know where they find the strength to overcome their horrific experiences.’ Combatants were often force-fed drugs (including gunpowder in their food), supposedly to make them ‘better fighters’. Their captors slashed them with knives and put cocaine into the wound before they went into battle.

The cocaine numbed all emotion. ‘One of our students, Abu, 21, said there was
only one day in the whole war that he remembered vividly because he’d run away
the night before and missed his drugs dose. I asked him why he ran away, and he said that a
witch doctor had decreed that in order to win the next battle they must find two
children and a pregnant woman and bury them alive. They made Abu dig the pits.
He was 12 years old.’
Girls now attending the school were, luckily, too young during the war to be targeted as rape victims, but still witnessed terrible scenes. ‘One, Fanta, described how, aged eight, she and some older girls were captured by rebels,’ says Miriam. ‘The woman in charge of them was cut up and eaten in front of them, and the older girls repeatedly raped.

‘Another, Ruth, nine at the time, was kept in a building with other hostages. Every morning five would be picked at random, taken out and shot. The soldiers would place bets on the sex of a pregnant woman’s baby. Then they would cut her open and the soldier who was right would shoot the other. There was no respect for life, even their own,’ says Miriam."

This article was written 6 years ago, we are now twice as far from the end of the war as we were then. I had initially told myself that this brutal period was no longer the subject of everyday conversation; rather, it was a constant presence in the background of the nation’s mind. That was why, I told myself, across all of my communications with various EducAidians, the topic of war had not come up.

Now, however, I have come to an alternative conclusion. Over the past 14 years Miriam has infused her constructive attitude towards problem solving throughout EducAid; resoluteness in the face of challenges has become the defining feature of her leadership, along with an unabated love and dedication to her students. She will achieve her objectives in the manner that they should be done; no compromise.
















During some research for other articles, a question that I asked our coordinators was ‘Do you have an example of someone who has done amazing things for EducAid?’ Every single respondent, without fail, replied with the same answer: Miriam. Here is what AJ & Kai had to say when posed the question:

“Yes the EducAid Country Director Miriam is one person whose efforts need to be recognised. She was the first person having meeting with the whole community in Magbeni concerning Ebola. It was not only Magbeni, at all the other sites she held the same Ebola meeting.

The great love and caring she has for both staff and students is just wonderful. Almost all foreign workers and volunteers left the country when the Ebola outbreak started, but she is still with us.”

Miriam’s educational expertises gave her the knowledge to create a holistic and tailored academic syllabus, but it is her own determination, leadership and innovation that has enabled her to build a national network of schools in Sierra Leone. Over the past 14 years EducAid has dramatically changed the lives of all those who have come in to contact with it. It is an institution that, with the appropriate funding and logistical support, will grow and grow. Miriam’s strength and sensibilities have enabled her not only to give life to the most poverty-stricken and emotionally scarred children, but also to establish EducAid as an leading independent educational institution, and a model for those around it. She has stood up, discounting the hurdles of race and gender, and instrumented systematic change from within. Miriam isn’t building a better-than-nothing alternative, she is building a national academy for the future where morality, community, and hard work are our guiding principles: Excellent Attendance, Excellent Behaviour, and Excellent Effort. Now we have our alumni representing us in universities and colleges all around the world. Without Miriam’s passionate drive and sense of selfless duty, EducAid would not be what it is today.

In a passing comment, Miriam said that upon returning from the UK to a Freetown in the grips of Ebola, one staff member spoke to her and said, “This is how we know that you love us like a mother, you have returned to Sierra Leone to die with us.”

Miriam immediately identified the fear interlaced in this comment, and set out the course with which we are fighting Ebola today. Miriam has successfully changed the despondency and resignation with which Ebola gripped the population in to a programme of proactive education and re-integration. The work that Miriam has spearheaded in the space of a few months is nothing short of incredible; she and her support staff are educating hundreds of children that would otherwise have no access to their schooling, and no access to hope, by distributing engaging and lively classes and debates on mp3 players, BlueTooth, and by WhatsApp. It is this kind of innovative thinking that will ensure EducAid will continue to succeed in the future.

We should be clear, the reason that the topic of war has never been raised between any contributors and myself is not because it is a distant memory, or a national desire to move forward, it is because Miriam will not allow for dwelling on things in the past. Just as she was quoted in the original article, ‘My attitude has always been: “I don’t care what you did in the war – where is your maths homework?”’

It is Miriam’s drive and focus that we must be thankful for. We have an incredibly dedicated and hard-working team that support her in Sierra Leone, and I think that they would all join me in this praise and thanks.

Thank you Miriam




Original Article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1056641/The-angel-Freetown-Giving-young-war-victims-hope-education.html#ixzz3LblvhSTW

Close Call - Donald Whenzle

Donald Whenzle is another member of the EducAid community that has had to grapple with the ferocious Ebola virus.

Donald grew up in Waterloo, attending both Primary and Junior Secondary school there before joining EducAid to finish his Senior Secondary studies. He was shocked on his arrival because of the vast differences in teaching methods. His previous school taught only the essential knowledge for exams, on a rote learning basis - a method that he suggests made it hard for him and his peers to engage with. 

On arriving at EducAid, he found our independent learning and holistic syllabus particularly challenging, so it took him some time to adjust. However, having become an integral member of the EducAid family, Donald sees himself as improving socially as well as academically at EducAid. His studies were disrupted somewhat after the Minister of Education cancelled the senior public exams in 2013, but he was finally able to finish his secondary studies in 2014 and to join our junior staff early on this year.

Donald says that the style and content of teaching provides a completely different kind of education that he was ever exposed to. He points out that the Quality Enhancement Programmes - teacher training courses for other school teachers - are a testament to the fact that EducAid's model is one to follow. It lays an importance on being a wholesome member of society, and giving education back to the community, rather than simply passing exams. In turn, this focus sees EducAid make important and long-lasting changes to Sierra Leone.

Waterloo is a major intersection on the Masiaka-Yonibana Highway, on the main approach to Freetown from the South. It has been one of the worst seats of Ebola. The map, drawn from a WHO Situation Report on 10th December, shows the number of cases to appear across Sierra Leone in the prior 21 days. 

Freetown is on the west coast, and the big yellow circle sitting on top and south of Freetown's circle represents the outbreak in Waterloo. The voracity of the disease's spread has not let up since the beginning of the outbreak, and life there is incomparable to what it was before Ebola.

Donald was in Maronka, one of our schools, when he heard that his mother had travelled from Waterloo to stay in a nearby town, Wellington, to try and escape Ebola. Later on, he got a call from his mother to hear that the house she had previously been staying in had been quarantined because an uncle had become infected by Ebola. The whole family was quarantined in the house with no food, treatment, or water for one week. Eventually they were taken to the treatment centre, but it was too late for most of them. One by one, nine out of eleven members of the family became infected and died. His grandmother, three uncles, three aunts, two cousins all died; two aunts survived. 

The fact of Donald’s mother going to Wellington for that period saved her life – it is these moments of fortune that we hope to hear every day. Donald is very grateful to be in the EducAid family and explains that without EducAid, his situation would be much more vulnerable indeed. He is also fairly sure that he too would have been infected if he had been with his Waterloo family.

This is another example of the importance of isolation from Ebola. The first phase of our #AfterEbola programme has been a success, in that we have avoided any cases of Ebola on our sites so far, and now we are moving forwards by implementing Phase 2, and Phase 3.

We can only pray for miracles and fortune, but we can actually make preventative action. We are fighting for a life #AfterEbola, please help us this Christmas time.

Donate to our Ebola campaign here.

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Christmas is coming...maybe think about buying a Gift Certificate, or a delightful book of photographs taken by our students in Maronka and Rolal.

Returning to Kigbal – EducAid on the BBC

The picture that we painted nearly a month ago in Kigbal was not one full of promise. Coinciding with a BBC News journalist, Miriam visited a small village called Kigbal, 4 hours northeast of the capital, Freetown.

The BBC Journalist, Andrew Harding, described the scene like this:

“A smooth tarmac road runs through the middle of Kigbal village in Sierra Leone. On the east side of it, perhaps 30 children stand clustered in the shade.

"We came to this side to be safe," says 14-year-old Mabinti Kamara, glancing at the mud homes across the road and a dark silhouette beneath a tree. 

"A lot of people died there. They took my father away. I don't know what happened to him".

Miriam’s report was just a bleak:

“The little children that I was talking to today have lost everyone – both parents and often several siblings – and they are watching each other die one by one. Every day, more die. 

Please God; pray that there are some survivors so that we will have a chance to help them. I was talking to them about going to school – what else do you do? 

I took some photos of the children and showed them – they were quite excited about that. Then we were talking about them going to school, and I showed them a photo of Kofi and so on. The little girl at the bottom is Adamsay and she is feeling better than she was yesterday – but is she going to live? 

It is really very sobering, Marcus.”

This was on November 10th.

More recently, however, Andrew Harding has returned to Kigbal and found a different scenario. Despite suffering heavy losses in the village – 1 in 6 died to the disease over a period of weeks – the general mood is much better. This is in no small part to the work that we have done at EducAid, and he mentions so in the article and video. We have managed to make safe a number of the Orphans with the help of Zainab, the carer featured in the film, and we will continue to do everything we can to help the sufferers and orphans of Ebola. See the children that we have saved from Kigbal, making the most of our Education by Podcast initiative – our programmes are working, and we are reaching the most vulnerable children by any safe means possible.

Read Andrew Harding’s report here, and watch his video in Kigbal – it shows a village with hope and optimism restored in their minds. Despite their losses, a sense of achievement is in the air. For now, this is the case. Ebola is, unfortunately, still severely out of control. With 45 new cases yesterday, 58 on Monday, and 25 on Sunday, the 41% survival rate will mean that 75 of those people will die. This is an unnecessary waste of life.

Please continue to help us change the course of Ebola in Sierra Leone. Donate now.

Interim Care Centre - #AfterEbola Phase 3

Last week we outlined the need for the 3rd phase of our fight in this Ebola outbreak. This week we are taking a huge step towards implementing an effective and progressive programme for life after Ebola.

There are huge numbers of children, the most vulnerable members of society, being orphaned by the vicious Ebola virus. The Guardian wrote in a piece that Sierra Leone’s Ebola orphans face a situation worse than war; we agree. We have some concerns over the effectiveness of the family tracing and reunification projects that are being prioritised at the moment, so we find ourselves with an even more important role than before.

Upon careful consideration, we have decided that our most effective course of action is to open 2 Interim Care Centres (ICCs), in to which we will accept the orphans of Ebola. These centres will take the lowest risk orphans – those that have been known to us for an extended period of time, who have not come in to contact with the virus for at least 21 days – in to an isolated building on one of our sites. Here, these children will be kept for a further period of 21 days, to ensure that there is no risks posed by the virus, and then integrated in to our school system where they will be provided with the loving home, care, and education that EducAid has to offer.

The first ICC is in Maronka, it was previously used as the teacher training building. We have fenced off the building to ensure no early cross-contamination between the students and orphans. The second ICC is the secondary Junior School building in Rolal, it has seen a huge amount of work done in preparation for this initiative. We have dug new latrines for the building, turned the kitchen in to an incinerator, painted the walls with a special oil-based paint to allow for easy disinfection, fenced around the whole site, as well as a number of other changes that we will detail later.

The period of isolation for these children is our final step of protocol. We are confident that these orphans do not have Ebola, but our priority has always been to ensure the safety of our current student and staff population so this period is essential to that.

Rather than exposing our staff to any risk of exposure, we have enlisted the help of Zainab and other Ebola survivors. They have been trained in care and preventative methods, and will now oversee the period of isolation and continue the daily health checks throughout these 3 weeks. During this time she will be looking after these orphans: keeping them happy, and healthy. The survivor carers will also play an important role in monitoring the children from a pastoral point of view, and informing us of any real concerns that she has with these children who have suffered such a terrible time.

This process is of huge importance for Sierra Leone, generally. Not only are we taking steps to reduce the social impact of Ebola on those most affected, we are also helping to reduce the spread of Ebola by undertaking a localised period of observation and removing vulnerable potential sufferers from the cycle of transmission, thereby reducing the strain on the health and emergency services.

These orphans have seen the worst of Ebola. Many of them have seen parents and siblings taken by the virus, and have now spent months isolated and without any pastoral care of any kind. Aside from the educational support that we expect to provide, we are preparing ourselves for the need for psychological support – we will discuss this need, and our methods in another post. For now, feel confident in the fact that EducAid is now participating in the seclusion of potential sufferers of Ebola, as well as in the education of ways to prevent it.

Today is #givingtuesday, an initiative that was borne from a distaste for the excesses of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you’ve been chasing down the latest deals and buying presents for Christmas, spare a thought for the orphans that are taking their first step to rebuilding their lives. We are still a long way short of what we need to raise, and we really need your help.

Remember, £180 will pay for a student for an entire year – accommodation, food, medical care and their education. Please donate whatever you can.

We’ll be telling Zainab’s story tomorrow – how she lost her family, fought through Ebola, and is coming back to help EducAid save the next generation. Make sure to sign up for the blog to receive alerts in your inbox.

Effective Changes from Within - #afterebola Phase 3

West Africa has faced the worst medical crisis of a generation. Sierra Leone, a country devastated by a decade long civil war only 13 years ago, now faces a humanitarian crisis of dreadful proportions.

Ebola has created a divisions within our society: discontent with the domestic and international reaction to the outbreak; stigmatised sufferers and survivors of Ebola; and a general paranoia and fear, have left the once cohesive nation distraught. Several flashes of civil unrest in the capital, Freetown, exemplify this, and reports of communities that strip infant survivor’s care packages before leaving them in the street to starve leave us feeling worried for the health of the country. We are seeing the social fabric of society stretched to a breaking point.

After more than a decade of working in Sierra Leone - a Sierra Leone that has seen so many improvements - we fear that we are returning to the social divisions that brought about the atrocities of the past.

Just as in 1991, and in almost all cases of crisis, the segment of society to suffer the most is the children. Despite the increased levels of aid now flowing in to the country, we are concerned at how the major NGOs and governmental relief funds are proposing to provide support to those that need it the most, the children. Our Country Director, Miriam, writes:

"Many of the major charities will only fund projects that want to prioritise family tracing and reunification. The tragic thing with that is that we have not learned anything from the post war reunification projects. In theory, a child being taken in by aunts and uncles sounds ideal; in practice, any family will take in a child that comes with some Unicef funding (for however long that lasts!) and then, so so often, the child sees none of the support but becomes the family servant / slave. It happened thousands of times over last time and even since. We already have lots of these kinds of cases studying in EducAid.

Our approach is to give the children a family, a home, and an education. We would of course give kids the option of accessing their family if they can be tracked down, but depending on what we found we would probably support a decision to make their new homes with us where they can get schooling and a supportive family environment with access to the family during holidays etc if they want to go."

Our solution is simple. By providing all of the academic, accomodation, and pastoral support that a child could require, we become the platform for children to succeed independently. If the reunification of families is possible, then we will do our all to facilitate this process. However, we are also able to keep a close eye on the risks and benefits of the one most in need, the child. We must reiterate that, unlike many of the major charities that are contributing to the very necessary work being done to combat Ebola, we are a Sierra Leonean organisation. We don’t employ 180 staff in the country to make for good stats, we employ 180 staff in the country because that is where we operate. They will not leave – they are permanent. We are a Sierra Leonean school organisation with international funding. Our staff are able to maintain the close and personal connections to the beneficiaries of our support, rather than opening the opportunity of that support being mismanaged or misused by those in the care of the children. In no way are we criticising the intentions of the major charities, we simply believe that an internal organisation is in a much better position to administrate effective and progressive changes from within.

We have begun our work on phase 3, and it's very exciting. Our next blog post will tell you what we are doing, and how we are already helping those directly affected by this vicious disease.

We are trying to raise £150,000 to secure the future of Sierra Leonean children, and we desperately need your help. Donate to our #afterebola programme now.

#afterebola phase 2 - Education by Podcast

At the beginning of this blog, we set out our 3 stage plan to combat the effects of Ebola on our students, staff, and the wider population as a whole. The first of these phases was to implement protocols to protect our sites from any potential Ebola threat. Now deep in to the worst Ebola outbreak the world has ever seen, we are confident that our measures have effectively combatted this threat. We continue to do our utmost to ensure that these standards are upheld by minimising the movement of students and staff to an absolute minimum, with the former group seldom if ever allowed to leave the site other than for emergency medical treatment.

Phase 2 of our on-going Ebola response programme has been in action for a number of months now. This phase was to ensure that those students not living on our sites, and therefore more vulnerable to the chaos of Ebola, to continue their education. What is sometimes difficult to grasp is quite what an impact EducAid has over our students. We are not a traditional school as you, or I, might consider it. We provide stable holistic support and guidance for our students throughout their lives. Life is difficult for young people in Sierra Leone, no matter what their schooling, and for our day students the gulf between school and home can be a tormenting reality. Fortunately, however, we have always provided the stability to helped these vulnerable and disadvantaged children to continue to tow-the-line, and to embody our values and principles.

As the economic situation in Sierra Leone worsens, the struggle for survival – let alone the battle against Ebola – gets more difficult. As the social situation worsens, one which has seen serious civil unrest in Freetown, the concept of education becomes more and more abstract for our estranged students. For a nation that is still healing the wounds of a recent civil war, where schooling is often at an exclusive premium, communities do not have the integral investment in education. Our main fear for these young people is that the more time they spend away from our supportive community, the further they will slump back in to the older principles of a past generation. Not only this, but the disillusion that these students will feel having lost a whole year of their lives to this indiscriminate and alien virus will discourage them from returning to us at EducAid at all.

Our objective was simple, but the route to achieving it has been hard. We wanted to provide free and easy access for our students to continue their education from home so that they could connect with our school, and to continue on their course to graduation. Soon after the Ebola outbreak, we began to record educational classes – more of an educational discussion panel really.

Earlier on this week, I conducted an interview with Emmanuel Bailay to ask him about the project.


1. What is the process of putting the podcasts together?

There are seven people that are involved in the planning of the podcasts. Miriam and six staff who are in charge of recording and editing. Apart from the recording team, there are three teachers who run the discussion; this includes a leading subject teacher along with two other teachers.

We have two different groups for recording, one in Free Town and one up country. For the up country we do recording at Magbeni, Rogbere, Rolal and Matele.


2. How have you found interesting ways to engage students?

We have some interesting ways of engaging students. In the first place, our recording methods whet the appetite of students for our podcasts. Our recordings are not boring because it is more of discussion among subject teachers. For example, for any recording, there is a leading subject teacher who does the explanation, and the two others will ask questions based on the topic, so at the end of the day, students will get a clear understanding of topics in their respective subject areas.

Our podcasts are quite different from the ministry of education. In our podcasts, time is highly considered. For every lesson, we have a maximum of twenty five to thirty minutes presentation because we don’t want it to be boring. The ministry of education have a different method of podcasts. Theirs is more of a teacher led, that is, one individual will talk for an hour or more. Students sometimes lose patience in listening to their programmes because it is boring.


3. How do you distribute the podcasts?

We distribute our podcasts through Bluetooth, Whatsapp, Mobile phones and memory sticks for students to use. Unfortunately we don’t have mp3 players, but we distribute five lessons every week. For now, not all EducAid students are benefiting from the podcasts. The home [boarding] students are benefiting on all EducAid sites and few EducAid students within the community. We are trying our best so that majority of EducAid student’s and people in the community to benefit from it.

Currently we are reaching 215 home students - on all EducAid sites - and more than 100 people in the community.


4. What is the best outcome of the podcasts?

EducAid students are benefiting greatly from the podcasts because it enables them to have access to learning in time of crisis, and this will lead to a less dropout rate because students are always engaged. It enables them to have access to learning during crisis and to do more academic work. Had it not been the podcast, a lot of students would be drop outs because they will not have access to learning. There will also be an increase of unwanted pregnancy.

For now, some people in the wider community are also benefitting, but we are always trying hard to reach more people.


5. Have you had good feedback from the podcast?

Yes we had good feedback from the podcast. People really appreciate it, and they are hoping it will continue until Ebola is over.



We hope that you can appreciate how important this radio programme is to our students. It provides the vital contact to keep them in touch with their school and their friends. One can only imagine how isolated they must feel, constantly in fear of the deadly virus and locked away from their friends.

Emmanuel and his colleagues are doing a fantastic job, but with around 2,650 EducAid students still not receiving any contact from their school we still have a long way to go. We want to ask you to help us; if you could donate whatever you can spare so that we can continue to do the work that we do in Sierra Leone, we would be so grateful. Just know that not a penny of what you donate will be spent on anything other than the students in Sierra Leone, as all of our UK admin costs are covered directly from the pockets of our trustees. 

Link to donate is here: Donate for a life #afterebola

Getting the best from EducAid

We’ve had a few requests from people who wanted to receive inboxed updates from our blog, so we’ve decided to give you a quick guide to keeping up-to-date with our blog and social media.

Sign up to our blog to receive our posts in your inbox

You can do this from any of the pages on our website. At the bottom of each page, you can input your e-mail address in to the box entitled “Our blog”. Upon doing this, you will automatically receive our latest posts in your e-mail account without having to visit the EducAid website.

Alternatively, you can read our posts on our News Page whenever you fancy.

Sign up to our newsletters

We send out 4 regular newsletters per year, giving an overview of EducAid news and events during that period. We will also alert you of particular events that we have going on.

In order to sign up, on every page of our website, you can input your e-mail address in to the box entitled “Our Mailing List”.

Receive all of our facebook updates

At the top of our facebook page, you can choose to receive all of our updates by selecting “Get Notifications” from the dropdown list under the “Liked” button.

Also, don’t forget to follow Miriam on Twitter because that’s where she usually posts the up-to-the minute goings on of EducAid.

Thanks for all of your support. Remember that by liking and sharing our messages helps to spread the word about everything we do and to attract more donors so please do be vocal and active on your social media.

We’re still working towards our ambitious but very necessary target of £150,000 to provide support for those disadvantaged from Ebola, particularly the ever-increasing number of orphans that are coming out of this catastrophe. If you want to know why it’s so necessary, do read our blog where we’re regularly posting information regarding the Ebola situation and what we’re doing to protect our students and staff, as well as what we’re doing to plan for the a life after Ebola.

We hope that we’re bringing you a valuable insight to what is going on in Sierra Leone, so please do keep supporting us online and in donations.

Many thanks