Promoting gender equality and safe learning environments in schools

On a wet and windy day in May in the UK, we battled with the intermittent internet connection to talk to Isata M Kamara, project manager, in a hot and sunny Sierra Leone. Isata has been implementing a new workshop to alleviate Gender Based Violence in schools and to promote gender equality. We wanted to know how the project came about, where the idea came from and the results so far.

During lockdowns, children and students have been at home. Some students have been able to study, but many girls have been forced into early marriage, or have become pregnant. Now, even though lock downs are being lifted, many no longer go to school. The pandemic may have exacerbated the problems, but the challenges that women and girls have in the school environment have always been there.

While the government of Sierra Leone and its development partners have made frantic efforts to combat violence against women and girls with new laws and launching awareness campaigns, much is yet to be done in order to create gender equal and violence-free communities. Many young girls in schools do not find the school environment safe and supportive to allow them to realise their full potential.

Since 2019 Isata and Marie Antoinette, General Secretary of Gambia Teachers Union, have been implementing the Positive Periods Programme initiative teaching women and girls about menstrual health and how to make re-usable sanitary pads, so that girls can stay in school when they have their periods. The training was initially based on health and hygiene, how to take care of themselves, and how to take care of the pads. But as the girls in her workshops talked to Isata about their problems and challenges, she realised that there was more that needed to be done. This is the story she tells about how she developed a second initiative to support girls to stay in education.

ISATA – During the Positive Periods workshops, some of the girls were explaining to me “OK now when you go to a teacher and you are trying to explain yourself to that particular teacher some teachers will tell you ‘I am busy, I am teaching’”. Teachers don’t always have the time or the training to allow them to talk about what is preventing these girls from coming to school, and staying in school. So in turn students don't feel confident to talk to their teachers to explain issues that are affecting them at home and even in the school campus.

This is what some of the girls explained to me, and they appealed to me to offer training to train their teachers on the gender-based violence and equality issues that are affecting them in their schools and community.

So I thought that it was a good idea and it fits with what we are trying to do, we are trying to support them to realise their potential. I discussed this with my team and Marie Antionette deleted and we put some ideas and activities together. We then collaborated with the Sierra Leone Teachers Union (SLTU) to conduct this training on promoting gender equality and safe learning environments in schools across provincial Sierra Leone in the 4 regional headquarters in the provinces.

It was not the first time that I was inviting teachers to a workshop, as soon as they saw that it was the Steve Sinnott Foundation running it they were very happy and willing to come and learn together. We had many topics we wanted to cover but we selected a few topics that we knew we could create useful activities from. We wanted to create a space where everyone felt safe to ask questions and take turns facilitating, so that it would be a fun and interactive session. We also gave them manuals which they can use in their schools.

For some of the topics we had separate discussions for men and women and we also had opportunities for men and women to discuss things together. By inviting both male and female teachers from different schools it was challenging because it got argumentative at times.

It’s two days training and before the end of it, every school had their own action plans that they wanted to implement. They wanted to create clubs, anti - gender based violence clubs, human rights clubs, disseminate information to their colleagues, set up WhatsApp groups for reporting and sharing challenges and so on.

When we carried out follow up visits to schools after the training, we found out that some of the schools have started working on their action plans already. The Steve Sinnott Foundation is ensuring that there is a follow up after each training session. We talk to the participants and visit their school, talk with the heads of the school and with the students. In this way we can support the implementation of the action plans, and offer more training if needed.

From these workshops and the follow ups, the schools have implemented a new system of reporting which they teach the students to use when they face any issues. We have a focus group with the students so we will know how the system is working. According to these students, they do feel comfortable now to talk with some of the guidance teachers and counsellors that we have trained.

I believe if I put in a lot of effort and work, if I develop the full scale of this project to work on these issues in schools across the length and breadth of the country it will be a safer environment for the future generations. We are doing everything it takes to make it work; we call, we visit, we offer handouts for them to use, we get schools to put a questions box up so students can give suggestions on improvements, and what concerns they have.

I think this workshop is a great idea, as it came from the students and teachers themselves. Even now the other regions are asking and recommending that we should extend the Positive Period Programme re-usable sanitary pad workshop to them and to include the primary level of the Gender Equality and Gender Based Violence workshop in it. They really need this opportunity.

Lessons I learned from this workshop - I learnt that if you have a passion for something you have to go the extra mile, and you have to have courage no matter what. You will stand in front of people, and some will not take your idea on board, but some will. So you have to concentrate on those that want to make a change, they will go out and change others. This is what I have learned."

Thank you Isata for your unflinching commitment to improving education in Sierra Leone.

In Harmony With Peace Concert

By Ann Beatty • June 1, 2026

On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026

How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026

‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here