Isata M Kamara is the founder of GEDSA.
Gender Equality and Development for Social Action (GEDSA)
Background
Gender Equality and Development for Social Action (GEDSA) was born from the experience and passion of the lead founder during her childhood and teenage years. Gender discrimination and cultural practices have forced many girls out of school and made their dreams of a better life collapse along the way. The organisation is registered with the Bombali District Council and the Ministry of Social Welfare in Sierra Leone.
In Africa, Sierra Leone in particular is a society that still sees the position of women to be just housewives and cooks for their husbands. Sierra Leone is rated among one of the poorest countries in the world, the country has a population of over seven million according to the 2021 National Census (Male 3,716,263, Female 3,825,378, Total 7,541,641¹) and the priority according to culture is to prioritise boys’ education over girls. This is reflective of the education rates in the country as only 47% of the population was educated between the period 2004-2022. (2)
Impact of The Steve Sinnott Foundation in supporting education
Since the establishment of the partnership between The Steve Sinnott Foundation, the Sierra Leone Teachers Union, and Gender Equality and Development for Social Action, many interventions have been taken in the Bombali District in Northern Sierra Leone, Porto Loko District in the North-Western Region and Bo District in the Southern Region of Sierra Leone. These range from the training of school leaders on gender based violence, supporting school girls in the making of reusable sanitary pads, engaging teenagers on election violence, continuous engagement with schools to ensure girls have the space to speak up and report any form of violence (physical, sexual or psychological) through established structures like school mentors and guardian counsellors.
Funding support from The Steve Sinnott Foundation UK has seen girls making their own reusable sanitary pads, which has helped many girls come to school during their menstrual periods as they could not always afford to buy them, and become confident in speaking up.
GEDSA continues to make inroads in engaging stakeholders through radio discussions and community meetings in making sure children, especially girls and children with disabilities, are provided with support and care. The provision of learning materials including bags, books, pens, pencils, mathematical sets, sharpeners were provided for 100 children. The first phase targeted 50 beneficiaries and offered training for school leaders and parents to provide them with the skills and techniques to support them.
Governments are charged with the responsibility to ensure all economic, social and political aspects of a country are fully provided, but the status of Sierra Leone makes this impossible. So the need for partnerships and support from like minded organisations is essential for the achievement of SDG4.
The Steve Sinnott Foundation is fundamental in supporting GEDSA towards the achievement of this goal. Over this period of supporting GEDSA, over 2000 girls and boys in 15 schools have been taught about hygiene, drugs and violence, the importance of education and much more. 60 school leaders and over 100 parents have been reached with educational messages through support from the Steve Sinnott Foundation over a four year period. The aim is to continuously engage schools as an ongoing process each school year.
References:
- https://www.statistics.sl/images/StatisticsSL/Documents/Census/MTPHC_Provisional_Results/2021_MTPHC_Provisional_Results.pdf
- https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLE/sierra-leone/literacy-rate
This article first appeared in Engage 27.
BY ISATA M KAMARA • March 18, 2024
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.
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.
‘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
