All is not lost for the people of Kono district as there is development in that district’s education sector.
Reports gathered in the district show that Action Aid Kono has embarked on giving support to the district in the area of promoting that district’s human resource capacity.
The organization is said to have been promoting issues around governance, education and women’s right in the district as well as child sponsorship.
Speaking to Alex G Thoronka, the Programme Officer for Action Aid in the Kono district, he told Awoko that they had been training councils and community based organizations in budget tracking, governance issue and leadership issues.
Mr Thoronka said in an effort to compliment government’s efforts in the promotion of girls’ education, they had as an organization, decided to embark on the construction of schools in the chiefdoms within the district.
“Community schools emerged as a result of the community efforts. As an organization, we came in to give support where necessary”, Thoronka said.
Kono district was adversely affected by the civil war and schools were no expectation to that. As a result Action Aid decides to come in “as schools were burnt and the available ones are far apart. So we saw the need to give support to the communities through the construction of schools”, Thoronka said to Awoko.
The emphasis of the project is on the girl child and this could not be unconnected with the fact that the district is reported to be having higher teenage pregnancy and these are mostly from school going children.
At present they are operating in seven chiefdoms in the district, among them, Tankoro, and Nimiyama. Plans are underway for the construction of seven more schools in seven chiefdoms.
Funding is said to have come from UNICEF and implementation of project by Action Aid. “It has proved difficult to promote education here because, this is a mining district and most parents would prefer taking their children to mining site”, declared Thoronka.
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