By Airbel (International Rescue Committee)
From the article:
When Paul Skidmore, the CEO of Rising Academy Network, decided to open low-cost private schools in the West African countries Sierra Leone and Liberia, he had no idea he was walking into a humanitarian crisis. In 2014, as Skidmore and his team were busy working round the clock, the country was silently heading toward an epidemic of the Ebola virus that by 2015 would claim 5,000 lives in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.
As with many African countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone’s education systems leave plenty of room for growth. According to the Center for Global Development, “more than 60 percent of school-aged children in Liberia aren’t in school, placing Liberia in the lowest percentile of net enrollment rates in the world.”
The numbers in Sierra Leone aren’t much better. Nearly half of all Sierra Leonean children between the ages of 5 and 14 are involved in child labor, according to WE Movement, leaving over half of the country’s girls illiterate.
Read the full article here.
