Waterloo School Project

Waterloo School Project

I HAVE A DREAM

MY DREAM: TO ESTABLISH A SCHOOL FOR THE CHILDREN OF  RHEMA-WATERLOO IN FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE IN WEST AFRICA

HISTORY

 My name is James Sackor bartee. I was brought up by American and Swedish Missionaries from a two-week old orphanage baby. All my education and all that I am today is the result of the three female missionaries  Lillian E. Swanson, Agnes Carlson and Hannah Knutson, who left all they had in their country to travel to the jungle of Liberia where the need was great to care for hundreds of orphanage who would otherwise have little or no future .

About 6 years ago I felt the call to go to Africa to give back just a little of what I got from the missionaries.  I am a trained high school teacher and I felt the need to give the neediest an opportunity to get some education so as to give them a better future. This dream became clearer when I served as a volunteer at Rhema school in October 2010- February 2011.

Today I am happy to say that just a few weeks ago I was in Freetown Sierra Leone to open the school for the children of Rhema Church in the Waterloo area a suburb of Freetown.

Thanks to the effort of The Good Shepherd Church in Holland and the Nordingrå Prayer Group, I was given the opportunity to raise some fund by which I could travel to Freetown and lay the ground work to open the school. The school is named in the memory of Lillian E. Swanson , Swanson Primary School

Our goal

Long-term goal: To establish a primary school class 1 to class 6 for the children of Rhema and the community of Waterloo.  With  sufficient funds we will build a new school building for the kids on the property of Rhema Church in Waterloo.

The school will promote education for all especially for females.  We will give the kids one lunch per day because most of the parents are cannot afford to give their kids lunch money.  Most time many of the kids go hungry. We are very much aware of the fact that a hungry child cannot learn.

Short-term goal: To start the school this academic year of 2013-2014. We will start with only class 1 and class 2. This includes a total of 50 pupils (25 per class).  The school will have 2 female teachers and the project will pay the salary of about 800kr per teacher (1600kr for the  2 teachers per month) for the first year. We intend to add one more class per year till we reach our goal of 6 classes (class 1 – class 6)

The feeding program for the kids will cost about 3kr per student per day which about 50kr per student per month.  Our budget for the first year can be estimated to about 2500kr per month including the salaries for 2 teachesr, the food for the kids and school materials.

What we need for the project

1.       Funds to run the school around 2500kr per month for the first school year.

2.       School materials including children books for drawing and coloring, color pencils and crayons etc.

3.       Volunteers who can travel to Freetown and work with the project in different subject areas.

4.       In Sweden we need interested individuals who can help to formulate fund-raising programs and activities for our school project.,

5.       Interested organizations and individuals who can offer to support us for the first year to feed one or more child or to give support for the teachers’ salary or help in any way they can.

My intension is to travel to Freetown at least once a year to personally work with the school project. This will also require funds to buy my air ticket.