The Hope Academy For Girls School

About Hope Academy for Girls
Hope Academy For Girls (HAfG) is a formal six-year Junior Secondary and Senior Secondary School for girls in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The school provides the opportunity to continue education for girls who are on the verge of dropping out due to underachieved grades, financial constraints, abuse and/or exploitation. These risk factors form part of the criteria and selection process for new intakes.

Hope Academy for Girls is the only all-girls school in the peninsular, and the only school to provide free school meals.  The school has been in operation since 2017 under the direction of Mrs Aliea Kamara , founder and Principal of Hope Academy for Girls.


Location
HAfG is located in York Village on the Peninsular Circular Road in the Western Area Rural District of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. It serves girls from five communities within this catchment area.  The school works in close partnership with the local communities, providing support and resources for community needs, such as water access, meeting space, adult literacy programs, as well as community engagement and outreach e.g. hand hygiene and social distancing sensitisation during the Ebola and Covid outbreaks.


Why the need for HAfG?
There continues to exist a striking gender gap in education in Sierra Leone. Roughly 60 percent of girls who enter Primary School do not make it to Secondary School.

This disparity exists for a number of reasons, including:

> Unaffordability - parents and guardians not able to afford school fees, uniforms and necessary school materials. 
> Academic underachievement – students who do not perform well on the primary exit examinations are unlikely to be accepted into a Junior Secondary School.
> Social norms that place emphasis on male education mean that families often elect to invest more heavily in the education of male children.
> Sexual exploitation of girls reaching puberty, resulting in teenage pregnancy or early marriages is unfortunately very prevalent.

Without equity in education the distribution of wealth will remain skewed, particularly against women. There is a desperate need for well-rounded education which empowers girls in Sierra Leone to achieve their highest potential, and to be assured of a more prosperous future.


We Need Your Help
Join us as we change lives, one girl at a time. 

HAfG has been operational since 2017. Their first entrants to the Basic Education Certificate Exams (BECE) in 2020 scored extremely high in this national exam taken at the end of Junior Secondary School. We are thrilled that what once was a vision of a single woman, has become a reality with far-reaching impact for the benefit of rural communities in Sierra Leone. 

All funds from this campaign will go towards covering the cost of school fees for the students, purchase of books, stationary and other learning materials, as well as to provide daily meals for the students and staff.

Find out more about the school at www.hopeacademy.sl.

On behalf of the students at Hope Academy for Girls, we thank you for your support!