Senekedugu’s DEC School

Every year, typically 30 students were in Class 6 and and hoping to continue their education in junior secondary school. In 2021, about 5 of students completed class 6 went to Kabala junior Secondary School; 4 of students went to Ahmadiyya Muslim Agricultural junior Secondary School, 5 of students went to Loma Junior Secondary School, and 2 male students did not take the NPSE exams due to lack of learning materials and engagement in farming activities which they hope to continue the following year, 1 female student took the exam but has no support with learning materials to continue with formal education she dropout.

The DCE School is a primary school is located in the small village call Senekedugu 6 miles north of Kabala in Northern Province of Sierra Leone.  Around 650 people live in Senekedugu. 

  • The economy of Senekedugu is purely based on basic agriculture. Individuals work the land to grow crops like cassava/ yam, millet, maze, groundnut and greens with a concentration on rice farming. Children are often called from school to help tend to the farm when needed.

    All vegetable in kabala are coming from Senekedugu, the community is well known for massive production of vegetable. Its also a goat banking community. no cattle rearing, no pig.

    more of goats and few sheep also few locally breed chicken.

  • The town is off the power grid, and so any electricity is supplied by a diesel generator or smaller solar panels just to have access to light from a 12v solar bulb (as in the case of our Village Learning Center). The whole village has only 1 public water wells in the community, where villagers can get their daily water supply.

  • Worldwide connectivity of Senekedugu is very limited. No internet cafe exists and Internet is only available by traveling to Kabala or paying for cell phone credits for very slow 3G cellular connectivity (out of reach for most inhabitants). On the outskirts of town and beyond, there is no cellular connectivity.

  • The Village Chief of Senekedugu is Mr. Mohamed Moi Marah a man who has high aspirations for the advancement of his village through education. When a visitor enters Senekedugu, they should ask to be taken to Chief Mr. Mohamed Moi Marah to do properly introduced to the stakeholders in the community.

  • There is no western medical doctor in Senekedugu, but like most villages Senekedugu has a health center that is managed by a Community Health Worker (CHW) and lots of “peppa” doctors who practice a mix of traditional and western medicine. Kabala is also easily accessible for medical care.

Life in Senekedugu

World Possible’s Program

  • The World Possible Learning Program in Senekedugu built upon the solar infrastructure and remaining tablets from a program originally set up by CAUSE Canada in 2016 After the funding and programs ceased, World Possible - Sierra Leone was able to revive portions of the infrastructure left by CAUSE Canada to establish the current program.

  • The Senekedugu World Possible Program is housed in a room in the DEC Central School. Fifteen students at a time can work on 15 iPads (SM-113 Samsung with 4.4.4 Android Operating System). The iPads are connected to one RACHEL (RACHEL-Plus 1.0), which serves the Khan Academy and other content. The program is powered by a 50 watt solar panel with a 12v charging controller, 90amps battery and a 10-ports USB hub.

  • World Possible Program Leader: The leader of the World Possible - Sierra Leone Program in Senekedugu is Mr. Sateneh G. Kamara. He oversees daily learning sessions focused on mathematics using Khan Academy.

    Senekedugu has 4 community teachers and 2 trained and qualify teachers, the RACHEL has been a grate opportunity for those community teachers as they often take advantages of the different teaching methods mostly on mathematics.

    Mr. Kamara is the program leader for Senekedugu, he is a community teacher, he was motivated by the different teaching methods on the Khan academy video tutorials he applied for distance learning in a teachers college and he came out with a teachers certificate (TC), he is hoping to be approved soon by government.

    He is now a good mathematics teacher, and as a coordinator/ coach, he uses the Khan Math on his mathematics class.

  • The Mother’s Club has been very supportive for over 7 years now both with the original CAUSE Canada Program and now with World Possible - Sierra Leone Program with a total of 20 registered members.

    These members are mainly vegetable farmers, they support by giving partial payment of coordinator stipend, monitor kids attendance, pay carpenter to repair broken benches, provide lunch for all the kids in school once in a month or two just to maintain retention they also provides uniforms, a pair of shoes and others learning materials to most vulnerable kids.

  • We have only partially resuscitated this Village Learning Center. We need some help finishing the job.

    The center is using a RACHEL 1.0. We would like to upgrade to the much more powerful RACHEL 4.0. Among many upgrades, RACHEL 4.0 will bring much more powerful student tracking capabilities to our program. We believe we have found a donor for this upgrade and hope to install it this summer or before.

    What we really need is new tablets. The 15 original tablets are more than six years old. Batteries are failing and need to be frequently recharged. Many units have completely failed. We want to integrate our program into the full school day and run the learning center all day long and expand the curriculum to reading. Before we can do that, we need to buy 30 new tablets. We need enough tablets for a full Math and English class. If we can run 30 tablets all day long, that increases the number of tablet hours by a factor of five or more. That in turn, will increase student learning and measured performance in math and also allow us to expand the program from math only to math and reading.

Can you help us with $3000 to upgrade DEC Senekedugu’s School tablets.

This upgrade will also require upgrading the solar system, but we believe we have found a donor for that.