As posted on Facebook, a new initiative in Viaduct Foundation’s 2020 funding is the support of CAUSE Canada’s Peer Literacy program in Sierra Leone.
The Peer Literacy program supports 60 girls ranging from Grade 7 to 11 by providing them with tuition fees, uniforms, shoes, school bags, textbooks, calculators and math supplies. In exchange, the girls teach first and second graders how to read for one hour each day after school. The program provides an opportunity for the girls to receive a higher level of education and develop their confidence and teaching skills, meanwhile creating role models for the younger students. Over the course of the year, the 60 girls impact over 2100 younger students!
The Peer Literacy Program has become a respected model for helping adolescent girls stay in school while also helping primary school students to improve their literacy. Primary students who participated in this program had 12% higher literacy than other students.
The Peer Literacy Program has been designed to train older school girls to be leaders in their community while enhancing their own education and that of primary-school students.
In 2019 Viaduct Foundation contributed to CAUSE Canada’s “Building Teachers’ Capacity to Provide Quality Education”. project in Sierra Leone due to the critical need to get teachers in the Koinadugu region of Sierra Leone up to minimum government standards. Due to the pandemic, when schools closed resources were redeployed to provide support for remote learning instead. As schools reopen we want to support existing programs that have a proven track record of keeping as many kids in school as possible.