Patricia, aged 12, has big plans for her future.
Patricia is in her final year at primary school and hopes to go to secondary school. And she has bigger hopes too - when she’s older she says she wants to become Sierra Leone’s first female president so that she can help communities like her own find a way out of poverty.
She lives at home with her mother, father, three sisters and four brothers. Her family are supportive of her desire to do well and study and her dad allows her to use a hurricane lamp so that she can do her homework each evening.
The school she attended in Gbap was literally falling down around the students’ heads. The roof leaked, rafters would sometimes drop on the children and termites ate their school books. There was no toilet and the children had to go into the bush where there are snakes and wild animals.
A brighter future
Thanks to Christian Aid’s partner, the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone, Patricia and the other children in Gbap now have a chance of a brighter future ahead of them since it helped the community persuade the government to build a new primary school for their children.
Having looked forward to using her new desk and bench for months, Patricia is finally able to study in safety. She’s also thinking ahead and has dreams of forming a school band.
It’s thanks to your efforts during Christian Aid Week that the new school has been built and that Patricia and all the other children in Gbap now have a chance to get a better education – that in itself is a tool to help them out of poverty.
