About Konocef
KonoCEF is a novel idea to provide educational materials and other socioeconomic assistance as well as psychosocial support to deserving female high school students from low income or impoverished households in Kono district. The project focuses on the highest performing pupils at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (B.E.C.E) with special preference to female students pursing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields who are from low-income households. We emphasize education related costs that are critical to maintaining high enrollment and retention as well as excellent academic performance of girls in senior secondary schools in Kono.
As a way of complementing the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) in its Free Quality Education initiative under the New Direction, the aim of the Kono Children Education Foundation (KonoCEF) is to promote girl’s enrollment and retention in school from the senior secondary level up through the tertiary level.
Mission AND vision
KonoCEF’s Mission is to enhance the quality of life and provide a wide array of choices for girls and women in deprived communities in Kono District and Sierra Leone through ensuring sustainable, inclusive, educational support programmes that help address the cultural, religious, gender, age or social class barriers to girls’ education. We promote self-reliance while seeking the advancement and protection of girls and women in Sierra Leone.
KonoCEF’s vision is a free society where the rights, dignity and potentials of young girls and women are realized through the highest quality formal education that combines excellent academics, arts and music, athletics training as well as traditional and religious learning.
KonoCEF’s vision is a free society where the rights, dignity and potentials of young girls and women are realized through the highest quality formal education that combines excellent academics, arts and music, athletics training as well as traditional and religious learning.
Interventions:
KonoCEF is engaged in the following areas of intervention:
- Practical, individualized admissions and enrollment guidance to girls at senior secondary schools and universities in the country or abroad
- Provision of extra uniforms, bags, shoes and text books on core subjects and other areas of academic interest
- Provision of monthly stipend, to defray costs for lunch and extracurricular activities such as sports
- Hiring tutors for extra classes
- Regular monitoring of home life and academic progress
- Provision of small grants to immediate caregivers to improve the economic status of the family
- Monitoring of academic progress
- Provision of informal peer counseling (i.e. health, sexuality, sexual harassment, family
constraints, Bondo or Sande society) - Fostering of leadership through mentorship programs
- Annual General Meeting with beneficiaries and management team