Sessions
Global Collaboration to Boost Quality Education: A Case Study from Sierra Leone at the iEARN Conference
Ibrahim A Kamara
Empowering Children and Youth Sierra Leone
Ibrahim a Kamara
I'm Ibrahim A Kamara. I’m a change agent. I was once a student in IEARN, and later became a volunteer in the local Center. My life took a turn when I entered IEARN Sierra Leone. I'm the founder and Director of The Empowering Children and Youth school Sierra Leone, a school that aims to minimize the high level of illiteracy and promote quality education in Sierra Leone and I'm the founder and leader of the Safe Haven housing and relocation project, a project that aims to relocate families living in disaster prone areas to a safe place in the rural area. I actively engaged in helping my country accomplish the global goals, which I believe is also helping planet earth. I was trained and skilled in IEARN, A lot of skills were learned in both the local IEARN Center and the international collaboration Center. I served the local IEARN volunteering for few years before I moved to my community Congo town to make a difference and today I'm always thankful for IEARN in my life
Elaine Ihrie
Bunn Elementary School
Elaine Ihrie
Elaine Ihrie has been an elementary Special Education resource teacher for 16 years in Franklin County, NC. She has a BS in psychology from Atlantic Christian College, a M.Ed. in elementary curriculum from Gardner Webb University, and is National Board certified. For the past 7 years she has had an ongoing project entitled Friends Around the World, in which her class partners with classes around the world to increase global awareness. Students communicate via e-mail and video conferencing, collaborate to
create projects together, and exchange packages. The project has been grant funded by United Way for the entire 7 years.
Session Description
This session will raise awareness and engage participants in a discussion about quality education using a case study from Sierra Leone. Around the globe, and especially in one of the poorest countries in the world, Sierra Leone, there is a huge quality of education divide between the rich and the poor. We aim to bridge that divide and build responsive schools to boost quality primary and secondary education in deprived communities that cannot afford it. We also aim to build affordable homes to relocate families living in the disaster prone slum communities in Freetown. This roundtable discussion will be a discursive, idea sharing, collaborative and participatory activity, where we hope to achieve solutions for some of the problems people of Sierra Leone face.
What will educators learn and be able to do at the end of the session?
We hope to achieve our goals through a collaborative, participatory, connective, interactive and voluntary effort to help make the world a better place.
We hope to raise awareness about our work in Sierra Leone and to engage our participants on how we all can work together to solve global problems
We believe we will be able to learn new ideas from other people around the world
Additional Session Information
Majority of the Children attending the Empowering Children School where we have been working are coming from the slums, a community of hundreds of tiny shacks made of zincs. All the people living in those slums are at an high risk, an eminent danger of death. In the previous August Rainy Season, over 600 people were killed by mud slide, and hundreds were left critically ill in hospitals. Hundreds of homes and properties were flooded. Pupils' homes and everything they have was gone, the school had to raise funds to purchase and supply the pupils some clothing and bed spread to sleep on, and learning materials to restore back their schooling.
This was not the first time this has happened, the problem arises every year and is going to happen again. Experts had warned the water level will rise in the future and people living in those dangerous areas need to evacuate. We need safe schools as well as safe homes on a safer ground, but it sad, it sad to see children are not safe, and to see students are in danger and to see the danger coming to them slowly, any how, any way we need to do something and we need to take action now to prevent the disaster from happening.
Session Resources
Global collaboration to boost quality education and help families in disaster areas
BBC spoke with Ibrahim about the situation on the ground - video link
Global collaboration to boost quality education and help families in disaster areas
These are the Slides for the iEARN conference