Today a new contract for sponsorship was made with UNICEF Iceland in which Aurora Fund continues its support to the education and protection of children in one of the poorest countries of the world; Sierra Leone in Africa.
The picture shows Stefán Ingi Stefánsson, managing director of UNICEF Iceland and Auður Einarsdóttir general manager of Aurora Fund. The donation will support the formation of 100 mothers’ clubs which have proven to be a powerful way to get the poorest children of Sierra Leone to school, promote education and contribute to the empowering of women.
In the past years Aurora has contributed considerably to UNICEF’s educational project in Sierra Leone that is also done in cooperation with the local educational authorities. Now already about 300 mothers’ clubs have been founded in the Kono region which was hit the most seriously by the war that raged in the country about 10 years ago. The average number of mothers in the clubs is about 40 and the students that the clubs tend to are about 230 which means that the multiplier effect is tremendous and the mothers’ clubs have already reached about 70,000 children. By founding 100 more mothers’ clubs it may be expected that within two years the number will be about 100,000 children.
The objectives of the mothers’ clubs can be defined in the following way:
Education:
- To get all children to go to school.
- To ensure that all children receive school materials and -uniform.
- To support and control school committees and teachers.
- To prevent student dropout.
- To ensure orderliness in the school.
- To promote the value of education in the community.
Child protective services:
- To fight against teachers’ violence towards students.
- To prevent teenage pregnancy.
- To work against marriages of young girls.
- To fight violence against children in the community.
Empowering:
- To teach the members skills in democratic operation of associations.
- To teach the members to write minutes and do bookkeeping.
- To give women a more powerful platform to express their views.
Economic development:
- To pay for school fees and school uniforms for the children from the poorest families.
- To support the school as much as possible.
- To contribute to economic growth for the benefit of the children of the community.
