INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE GIRLS 11TH OCTOBER 2020
THEME: MY VOICE, EQUAL FUTURE
AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE GIRLS OF THE SIERRA LEONE YOUTH ADVOCATE PROGRAM
As we celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child, we as beneficiaries of the Sierra Leone Youth Advocate Program wishes to write and express our sincere thanks and appreciations for the support that have been given to us as girls to enhance our quality of education. We all know that without a proper education our future will not be bright.
The theme for this year’s International Day of the Girl is “My Voice, Equal Future” we want to take a little time to talk about how we want to use our voice to advocate for new skills to help girls become better citizens as we build towards a better future. In our community in Mile 91, girls go to school and get an education, but after our formal education we sometimes have to wait years to go on to college and during this time we don’t have anything that we are doing. We believe that one of the ways to support girls who are not able to go straight to university or have dropped out of school is to help us to become women of substance by helping us learn new skills that can help us get jobs or become business women.
We would like to have more opportunities where there are training centers to help develop our skills build a better future. We want to learn skills like: catering, soap making, weaving, tailoring, hair dressing etc. if we are able to learn any of the skills stated above, we will have the opportunity to be self-employed and self-reliant and take advantage of our destiny.
We want share this letter to our peers, the Government of Sierra Leone, stakeholders, community leaders, and those who are working to empower young girls throughout the country as an appeal to you to keep in mind that as much as girls have been empowered to go to school and get an education, there are still challenges that come along the way and we still need support. We still have a huge number of our peers who drop out of school due different reasons and once they dropout they lack certain skills needed to work and become sustainable. This leads to more poverty in our community and for that reason they become victims. We know that education is important but we also understand that learning a skill can also take place when formal education is not available. These skills that we will learn can help us gain employment or make money so that we can help for our families and take care of our future.
As we close, we want to share a story about one of our peers who lives in Makeni. Our friend has gone through many struggles and eventually went on to learn a skill. She has inspired and motivated us so much that we too want to learn a skill, in her speech when she was narrating her story, she said that she had lost hope and success for her future because she was financially bankrupt and could not continue schooling so she decided to enroll in one of the training centres in Makeni at the Sierra Leone Opportunities Industrialization Centre (S L O I C), after the training she was able to acquire a certificate and enrolled in one of the famous hair dresser as a volunteer in Makeni and served there for three months until she decided to start her own saloon of which she has total control of.
Today she can boast of being self-employed and self-reliant in her conclusion she advised us to learn a skill that help us to earn our living and help us towards a brighter future.
Finally, in closing, we all know that the formal system of education has to do with certain qualification which the majority of us girls cannot afford, we as girls want you to help and empower more girls to acquire vocational training skills to help us as we build an equal future.
Kindly submitted by the Girls of the Sierra Leone Youth Advocate Program
