Primary and Secondary Schools in four villages: Mahera-Lungi in Kafu Bullum Chiefdom and Mathen, Forikolo and Gbainty Wallah in Lokomasama Chiefdom in Port Loko District on Tuesday received materials and sets of equipment from staff of the Holy Rosary Sisters through its Caritas project.
The donation is geared towards trauma healing and guidance counseling in the country.
Office furniture and leaflets containing issues on guidance counseling were among items given to the Sierra Leone Muslim Brotherhood Primary School and the District Education Committee Primary Schools both in Mahera-Lungi. The two District Education Committee Primary Schools in Mathen and Forikolo also received the same sets of furniture and materials, followed by distribution of manuals to Kankaylay Islamic Agricultural Secondary School and St. Anthony’s Catholic Primary School, both in Gbainty Wallah in Lokomasama Chiefdom.
The distribution of the counseling materials was followed by a one-month teacher training programme conducted by Caritas in Freetown with one teacher representative from each of the beneficiary schools on guidance and counseling.
It is the belief of the project that through the guidance and counseling offices created in these schools, children who are traumatized as a result of psychological problems will be identified and counseled, and then find remedies to their stresses.
At the SLMB Primary School in Mahera, the Headmistress, Mrs. Rosaline Kamara, spoke about a number of issues affecting the academic work of children in her school. These, according to her, include acute poverty in some homes which have adverse effect on the socio-educational development of those she has learnt about.
She also said that the devastation caused by the eleven-year civil conflict is yet to be a thing of the past in the minds of many people in and around her school. She said that some mothers lost their husbands alongside their assets, and that since the end of the war in 2002, some people still have social problems that they are grappling with, giving reasons for traumas and psychological problems. She advised that one of the remedies to the situation is to ensure effective counseling and trauma healing like the one presently undertaken by Caritas. However, a process of this nature requires lots of commitments to acquire its desired aims and objectives. Paramount among them is the financial issue which will be able to move the agenda as was evident in Mrs. Rosaline Kamara’s suggestions on ways to completely waive out trauma and related psychological problems. She appealed to Caritas to back up the exercise with some financial motivation, especially for children whose state of trauma has financial consequences.
By Poindexter Sama
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