On the 2nd June 2020,the President of Desert Flower Africa Rev. Fr Peter Konteh who also doubled as the Executive Director of Caritas Freetown presented a total of 20 radios sets to the most valuable children to facilitate distance learning. The government of Sierra Leone closed schools across the country on the 31 March 2020 as a precautionary measure to control the spread of the Corona virus. Since then School going children have been kept home and much is not happening.
However the government of Sierra Leone on its own part and in collaboration with other agencies have organized distance teaching and learning on radio covering all classes both in the primary and secondary schools levels and on regular basis to keep children busy and to help them cover the academic syllabus but the biggest challenge this initiative posed is the availability of radio sets for children especially those from poor and vulnerable backgrounds who cannot afford radio sets on their own to follow all this important lessons, many would have to take public exams very soon.
The arrival of these radio sets is a real welcome relief to so many of our Desert Flower beneficiaries especially those girls who depend going to neighbours to listen to lessons which has its own associated risks. Today much smiles were seen in the faces of these girls as they received the radios sets and who can now sit at home to follow their regular radio teachings.
The radio sets are of high quality in fact first of its kind with the ability to record the lessons in case of children who have difficulty to understand a particular concept, it will help them to relisten later at their own time, it also has higher sensitivity that can enable children in the most remote areas to get connected easily, and its rechargeable meaning that the cost of buying batteries will be less and above all the radio sets have lights that can help those who live without electricity to study at night as they listen to the techings at the same time.
But the radio sets were not enough for all the children, meaning that some families were left out. The method of selection of beneficiaries was lucky dip so those who were not lucky enough didn’t get and its natural that they were not happy to have missed such relevant and important tool of education.
The parents and the community of Allentown as a whole expressed their heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all benefactors of desert Flower Foundation and not forgetting Walter and Waris and Fr. Peter who made this possible.
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