Voices of Courage Awards Luncheon 2006

CELEBRATING ACHIEVEMENTS IN
PROMOTING EDUCATION IN EMERGENCY SITUATIONS

May 11, 2006, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, New York City

Host: Lesley Stahl

Awards Presentation: Caroline Kennedy

Event Chair: Debbie Welch

Honorary Co-Chairs: Catherine O'Neill and Liv Ullmann

Co-Chairs: Glenda and John Burkhart, Katharine I. Crost, Jocelyn Cunningham, Dina Dublon, Gail Furman , Miranda M. Kaiser, Elizabeth J. Keefer, Regina S. Peruggi, Mary Anne Schwalbe, Sue Simon, David Spears and Christine Wasserstein

HONOREES
Christiana Thorpe is the Founding Chairperson of the Sierra Leone Chapter of the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE). She has worked tirelessly to promote access to education for youth in Sierra Leone, as well as in Guinea when she was a refugee there in 1997-1998. She has worked at both the grassroots level and the national level, including as a teacher, as the principal of a secondary school, as an official of Sierra Leone’s Department of Education and later as the Secretary of State for Education. Christiana’s work has been focused not only on girls, but also on women’s literacy and empowerment.

Christiana's keynote speech

It is with humble joy that I accept this prestigious award on my own behalf and that of my organisation the Forum for African Women Educationalists FAWE-Sierra Leone Chapter.

Working in Education in Emergencies has accorded me the opportunity to contribute to the emotional, psychological and physical rehabilitation of my country, and I thank all our partners for the support and encouragement through awards like this one.

Some years ago I received a postcard saying “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” I have tried both and I am here to share my findings with you.

Education is definitely about academics, but it is even more so about economics. Whenever education is neglected for whatever reason, the resulting costs become very high.

I am from Sierra Leone in West Africa, where we practice the extended family system. We were eight siblings, and myself and a younger sister grew up with my grandmother in a slum area of the city. At the early age of six years I became conscious that my sister and I were different. In the neighborhood, we were the only girl children going to school. After school grandma insisted on us doing our homework instead of playing with the other children, which I vehemently disliked. At age 14 when I was in junior high school, some of my peers had started having babies, and as I speak to you now, at least two of them are great-grandmothers. What I am saying is that we have a new generation every fourteen to fifteen years. This, my dear friends, has cost Sierra Leone.

The Rebel War started in Sierra Leone in 1991. Most of the uneducated and unemployed young people became easy fodder for the architects of this war. By 1995 it had gained momentum. At that time I was Minister of Education. Thousands of displaced children were in the streets – roaming and loitering. In June 1995, we started an Emergency Displaced Camp School Program. Four-thousand-five-hundred children at both primary and junior high school were occupied for five hours every day. We taught them reading, writing and arithmetic. We gave them a meal a day, provided counseling sessions, and plenty of games and sports.

Two hundred and fifty girls aged 14 to 15 who came to register were pregnant. This discovery was shocking to us because we knew they were cases of rape. So we started a school for pregnant girls and teenage mothers. The girls learned livelihood skills and vocational skills.

Please allow me to share with you an incident that happened once on my way back to Sierra Leone after getting a visa. My journey would normally have been six hours, but it took twelve hours because the roads were so bad. At the border, a lady of about eighteen to twenty years of age came up to me. She carried a plastic bag, and in that bag, there were two cans of ice cold soft drinks. Since I had been traveling for so long, I was very thirsty. The young women came up to me and said “Auntie, Auntie. This is for you.” Surprised, I asked “Who are you,” and she responded “Oh Auntie, you don’t recognize me. I was in your FAWE centre and did catering and food sciences.” The girl then showed me her shop: she had a little kiosk at the border town, where she sells drinks and sandwiches. Her baby, who had been in our nursery, has been enrolled in the primary school in the area. All the fatigue caused by my journey just disappeared. I felt so happy as I could see the difference that has been made in one person’s life. What a transformation!

On the 25 th of May 1997, there was a coup d’etat. I was out of the country and learnt about it through CNN. There was a mass exodus of Sierra Leoneans to neighboring Guinea. My home was ransacked and my family had to flee as well. I joined them later and we were in exile for almost a year.

The day I arrived in Conakry, I went to the Sierra Leone Embassy to register. The soldiers were at their wits end trying to maintain order. Sometimes they became violent with the crowd. We started a school to keep the children and young people out of harm’s way. There were three-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-eight children and young people between ages 6 – 25 years in the school.

At the end of the program I received a thank you letter from one of them called Mariama.

Dear Ms. Christiana Thorpe,

I am very happy to write you this letter because you have done so much for me that I need to say thanks.

You promised to help me, if anything concerning sponsorship comes up and indeed you fulfilled your promise. I was expected to do computer literacy in the FAWE training programme for Sierra Leonean children and youth exiled in Conakry and now you have given me a special gift. You have not only given me knowledge in computer which will be useful to me for the rest of my life, but also transport to return home.

Thank you very much for what you have done for me and my fellow Sierra Leoneans. It is a gift which we can never forget and anytime I sit in front of a computer I will remember what FAWE has done for me. Once again, thank you very much for what you have done for me and I pray that you may continue doing the same for others who may be in the same situation.

Goodbye and God bless.
Mariama D. Bah
Trainee

On that note I would also like to say thank you and God bless to you all.

Original article
Keynote speech