Educate. Empower. Endure: The Mbondaa Foundation 2026 Campaign for Sierra Leonean Students

A Classroom Should Not Be a Privilege

In Sierra Leone, the journey to school is paved with obstacles most children should never have to face. A torn uniform can keep a child home. A missing pencil can mean a missed term. For a girl, a single menstrual cycle without supplies can become the beginning of the end of her education.

Mbondaa Foundation exists to remove those obstacles one student, one uniform, one classroom at a time.

This year, we are asking our community to stand with us as we deliver on three commitments that will change the trajectory of hundreds of lives in Sierra Leone.

Our 2026 Commitments

Outfit and equip two schools with repairs, new desks, 300+ primary students with full school uniforms, shoes, paid school fees, and the supplies they need to learn: backpacks, notebooks, pens, textbooks.
Fund the university education of four exceptional students whose families cannot afford tuition covering fees, books, housing, and a monthly stipend so they can focus on their studies, not survival.
Increase enrollment for Girls in secondary school by 25%
Launch the Mbondaa Mobile STEM Lab in rural Kenema District — a traveling science, technology, engineering, and math enrichment program bringing microscopes, robotics kits, coding tablets, and trained facilitators to villages that have never had access to a science classroom.

The Problem We Cannot Ignore

Decades of civil war, the Ebola epidemic, and small payments for the country’s natural resources have left an education system that is chronically underfunded, under-resourced, and unable to reach the children who need it most.

The numbers tell part of the story. Roughly one million Sierra Leonean children of school age are not in school. Among those who do enroll, less than a third of girls will complete secondary education. In rural districts like Kenema, the dropout rate is even steeper, and access to qualified math and science teachers is essentially nonexistent. But statistics flatten lived experience. Here is what they don't show.

Barriers Every Student Faces

Poverty. Even where public schooling is technically free, families must still pay for uniforms, exam fees, books, transport, and supplies. For a household earning less than two dollars a day, sending one child to school means another stays home. More often it is the girl child. Often, the family chooses not to send anyone.

Distance. In rural Kenema and surrounding districts, the nearest secondary school can be a five-to-ten-mile walk through unpaved terrain. During the rainy season, those roads become impassable. Children miss weeks of school at a time.

Hunger. A child who has not eaten cannot concentrate. Many students attend school on an empty stomach, if they attend at all.

Teacher shortages. Sierra Leone has one of the lowest ratios of qualified teachers per student in West Africa. In rural areas, a single teacher may be responsible for over 80 students across multiple grade levels. Subjects like math, science, and English are often taught by instructors without training in those fields.

Crumbling infrastructure. Schools without electricity, running water, or latrines, are common. There are no labs, no libraries, no computers.

Barriers That Fall Hardest on Girls

For girls in Sierra Leone, every one of the challenges above is multiplied, and then compounded by a set of barriers that boys never face.

Period poverty. Without access to sanitary pads, clean water, or private latrines, girls miss four to five school days every single month. Over a school year, that is nearly an entire term lost. Many simply stop coming.

Early and forced marriage. Roughly one in three rural Sierra Leonean girls is married before her 18th birthday, and many before 15. Once married, girls are expected to leave school and assume household duties.

Teenage pregnancy. Sierra Leone has one of the highest adolescent pregnancy rates in the world. Until 2020, pregnant girls were legally banned from attending school, a policy only recently overturned, and one whose social effects linger. Girls who become pregnant rarely return to the classroom.

Domestic labor. Girls are expected to cook, fetch water, care for younger siblings, and farm often before and after a school day, leaving no time to study. When household demands rise, girls are the first pulled from class.

The result: a generation of brilliant, capable Sierra Leonean girls whose futures are decided not by their ability, but by the circumstances they were born into.

Amount	What It Provides
$25	A full school uniform and a pair of shoes for one student
$50	A complete school supply kit — backpack, notebooks, pens, textbooks
$75	A year's supply of menstrual hygiene products for one girl
$150	Learning materials for a class for a one term
$250	Lunch for a school for one month
$500	One full year of learning materials for one class
$1,000	Supply a class with new desks and chairs
$2,500	Two Mobile STEM Lab kits reaching 8 villages in Kenema
$5,000	A full four-year university scholarship
$25,000	Brand new school building

Every gift, at every level, moves a child closer to a classroom.

The Students Waiting on Us

There is a girl in Kenema right now who solves math problems faster than anyone in her village, but whose family cannot afford the uniform or transportation for next term. There is a boy who walks four hours a day to attend a school with no books. There are four young people accepted to university this fall who will not be able to enroll without help.

We know their names. We have met their families. We have made them a promise. We are asking you to help us keep it.