Extra Mile

For the last 11 years Extra Mile has been sending volunteers to teach in schools in Sierra Leone and in 2016 opened its own free school for local children who would not otherwise receive an education. Our school is located in Ober Funkia, a desperately poor suburb of Freetown. As a result of contacts made during volunteer visits the local people asked Mike Fielding ( the chair of Extra Mile) to fund and build a school for their children. Children whose only opportunities would be street trading, fishing or breaking stones for building. We now have 130+ students at our own school and are aiming for 200+ when complete. We have planned a library for the people of the village and intend to run adult classes in numeracy and literacy to help break the cycle of poverty in which they find themselves. We have engaged in teacher training with other schools in the area and standards are rising all the time. We have had recent successes in National Primary School Exams with 17 pupils passing to the next stage who had previously left the education system. An important part of our philosophy is the empowerment of women and girls. All our services are free to the recipients and we are funded by voluntary donors and fund raising activities. Our school employs only teachers and ancillary staff  recruited locally.  We provide free uniforms , free text book/ learning materials and free breakfasts to all our students. We have recently opened a fully equipped Science Lab enabling our students to study the sciences. We are in the middle of a building project which remains unfinished at the present time however we are constantly working on fund raising in order to complete our whole school. The building of the school itself has provided important employment for trades people from the local area.