Introduction
For three years, staff from Greenholm Primary, Great Barr Secondary and Lichfield Cathedral Schools have been visiting and working with the refugee community of Kissi Town in the Waterloo province of Sierra Leone, West Africa. What began as simple cultural exchange, has become a partnership between our communities which is committed to promoting friendship, cultural understanding and a better education for all of our children both here and in Kissi Town.
Such is its success, our children and staff were invited to London to the Department of International Development (DFID) where our year 6 children presented to the secretary of state and his staff. In his closing speech, Mr Mitchell described the project as the best school linking project he had ever seen in the UK. Please take the time to listen to a podcast interview with our children taken at DFID and which describes the effect which our partnership has had on our children.
What follows is a summary of the aims, goals and successes of our project.
In our first year, Miss Tsang and Mr Byrne watched as a doctor struggled to save the life of a 10 year old child suffering from malaria. Unfortunately, despite the doctor’s best efforts, the girl died. The doctors had wanted us to see just how bad the problem of malaria is in Sierra Leone. So, in our second year, with the outstanding support of our school community and in partnership with Great Barr Secondary and Lichfield Cathedral schools, we managed to raise enough money to take 4000 mosquito nets with us to give to the health centre and the people of Kissi Town camp. Better still, during our latest visit, we discovered that thanks to the mosquito nets, malaria related deaths in the camp have fallen by 40%! An incredible achievement, one which we will always be proud to have been a part of and which helps to define our school community as one filled with truly global citizens.