MDG: Achieve universal primary education
Give children living in trash dumps a chance for education and hope for a better future.
The Unforgotten enrolls child wastepickers in schools. We target children who do not attend school and instead spend their days at trash dumps, looking through the waste for food to eat and items to sell. We target children who earn about $0.50 per day. We pay for school fees, provide uniforms, school supplies, shoes and extra tutoring. We make an extra effort to enroll young girls in the program, because they are especially vulnerable.
When selecting families to sponsor, we give preference to those who are:
- headed by single mothers (where the father has abandoned the family)
- supported by mothers who earn less than $1 per day in wastepicking
- composed of at least two primary school age girls who have never been to school, but instead are engaged in wastepicking
- actually living in the dump
We hold meetings with school officials (principals, teachers, administrators) to get their buy-in with our program goals. We ask interested teachers to hold extra tutoring sessions for our sponsored children in the evenings, weekends and holidays and compensate them for their services. We meet regularly with the school officials to monitor the progress of the program and to identify areas of improvement. We pay the school fees for the children (if required) to ensure that they receive the requisite attention from school officials and teachers, and to ensure that the school has the resources to educate the children.
If the public schools are unable to accommodate the children adequately, we pay for the school fees for the children to attend private schools.
Capital Projects
Construction of Schools in Sierra Leone
In 2014, The Unforgotten Sierra Leone built two small school houses in the dumpsites of King Tom and Kissy Dockyard, to provide primary education to former child wastepickers. The communities were very energized, and helped with the construction. In January 2014, we brought on board two certified school teachers: Alimatu Jusu for the King Tom site and Francis Sesay for the Kissy site. We hired a local carpenter (who also lives in the bome) to build the chairs and desks, and hired two certified cooks to prepare meals for the children and their mothers. Our goal was to prepare the girls to enter primary school in the fall of 2014 (Bridge School Program). These facilities are used to tutor the children.
