My colleague Ann Jones had a piece in Sunday's Los Angeles Times about the prevalence and horror of violence against women in post-war West African countries.  Even though the wars have officially ended in the region, Ann explains, women still face extreme violence in their communities.  Check out her piece here.

I meet Yeniva for a drink and a chat one evening at Plan B, a laid back wine bar along Lumley Beach in Freetown.  Yeniva radiates energy; it’s clear she hit the ground running when she arrived in Sierra Leone and hasn’t slowed down yet.  Her program, Excel, will provide supplementary classes for a select group of secondary school students to prepare them to take their qualifying exams and eventually to continue their education at the tertiary level. 

“The average class size in Freetown government schools is 68 students, and the emphasis is on rote learning rather than critical thinking,” Yenvia explains.  “How will students learn to be progressive citizens if they are just calling and repeating?”

Additionally, Yeniva explains that it is challenging for secondary school students to prepare for their qualifying exams given the large class sizes and generally poor level of instruction available in the schools.  Most students, she notes, end up paying for private lessons, which cost about $100 a course, a significant sum in Sierra Leone.

Enter Excel.  The program, once fully operational, will provide supplementary education classes to two cohorts of 30 secondary school students at the SS1 level (equivalent to ninth grade in the United States).  The program will support these students with supplementary classes through SS3, when they take their qualifying exams.  Students will be recruited from 12 secondary schools in Freetown, representing a mix of government-run and private schools.  The program aims to work with students with high academic potential but from under-privileged backgrounds, whether they attend private or public schools, Yeniva explains.  Excel will also work with about 25 teachers a year to strengthen their background in key areas such as child development and lesson planning.

Herself a teacher for many years in Los Angeles, Yeniva understands the challenges of providing a holistic education in resource poor environments.  Before those hurdles can be faced, however, Yenvia is busy with the details of setting up a new project in Sierra Leone.  Excel is supported by Sierra Visions, a U.S. nonprofit run by Sierra Leoneans living in the United States that supports a range of development projects in Sierra Leone.   Yeniva and her colleagues are also in the process of fundraising.  Most of Excel's funding comes from private donors, but they are hoping to broaden their financial support to include foundations and possibly private companies.  This comes on top of the process of selecting schools partners, selecting students, hiring local staff and setting up an office!

To follow Excel's development over the year visit Yeniva's blog at Sierra Vision's website. 

It takes about an hour to drive the 17 miles from Kailahun Town to Koindu, along gutted dirt roads that dip at bone-rattling angles.  Driving into Koindu the first thing you notice is the houses: once-solid stone and brick structures with slender columns, sweeping arches and wide verandas are now charred with thick bush sprouting out the remains of windows and creeping over half-destroyed walls.  The elegance of the buildings speaks to Koindu's past as a regional trading hub.  Prior to the RUF invasion in 1991 Koindu's weekend market attracted traders and merchants from across Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.  Relatively well-off Sierra Leoneans lived alongside Lebanese traders who ran a maze of stores alongside the outdoor market in the center of town.  Rebels razed the town during the war, however, and according to the town's residents the market has not recovered.

My car drove into the center of Koindu around mid-day where one of my co-workers had assembled the town's leaders to speak to me.  After four months in Sierra Leone I still cannot get used to the fact that half a town will turn out to meet me because I am a foreigner and I work for an international NGO.  The town representatives included Koindu's District Councilor, ward commitee members (the governing body below the District Council), Women's Action Group members, the head of the market women's association, and local school teachers.  Even the local paramount chief made an appearance.  The presence of so many town leaders was not just a testament to the power of foreigners to draw a crowd but also to how little there is to do in these remote towns.

The residents of Koindu shared many problems that are common throughout Sierra Leone: a lack of good roads, a lack of quality water and food, a lack of decent medical care, a lack of jobs.  Time and again, though, talk returned to the market.  Even with peace in the region, trade has not picked up again in Koindu, the locals reported.  Several of them walked me through the old market--an assembly of stalls made out of rough sticks and lumber where townspeople sell groundnuts (peanuts), peppers, small fish and other small items of produce.  There appears to be hope within the international community, however, that things will change for Koindu.  The World Bank funded the construction of a gleaming new market complex a five minute drive outside town.  The new concrete structure contains 16 stalls with heavy metal doors for security.  The compound has not yet opened; one of the ward committee members said that the town was waiting for the District Council to come and inaugurate it. 

The new market was my last stop on my visit.  After surveying the site I got back into my car and drove away from the immaculate new stalls, past children playing hide-and-seek in the burnt shells of the old homes lining the dirt road.

Kailahun District lies just east of Kenema and Kono and borders Liberia.  The tip of the provine is where Revoluntionary United Front rebels, backed by Liberia's Charles Taylor, first invaded Sierra Leone in 1991.  Given its strategic placement between Liberia and the major diamond mining areas in Kenema and Kono, Kailahun and its people suffered a great deal of loss and destruction during the war. 

I am heading to Kailahun to visit our democratic governance program, which brings local government, civil society organizations and normal citizens together to address important community concerns.  I will also visit a Women's Action Group in Buedu, which works with IRC to address gender-based violence issues at the community level.  IRC is also running a very exciting program in Kailahun headed by long time writer and women's rights activist Ann Jones called the Global Crescendo Project.  Ann has traveled to Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia and now Sierra Leone where she provides groups of women with digital cameras to document their lives.  The women in Cote D’Ivoire and Liberia have documented powerful images of abuse suffered by women in their communities, and the resulting photo exhibitions they have organized have provided them with a platform to push for change in their communities.  To learn more about the project visit Ann’s blog at: http://www.theirc.org/special-report/ending-violence-against-women.html.

Please check back for updates on my trip later this week and early next!