Hello my name is Faris, a 21 Year Old uni student at Leeds and i am aiming to raise money to provide essential scholarships for young Sierra Leoneans who would otherwise of been barred from accessing education. After months of toying around with the idea, i aim to play a role in helping achieve Free Quality Education in Sierra Leone. Our fundraiser, aims to raise money via direct donations and/or selling clothes to provide the infrastructure needed to significantly assist secondary school graduates with a life changing opportunities.

1. Why are scholarships in SL important -> This fundraiser is important as access to tertiary education remains a barrier in the country. Many poorer or rural Sierra Leoneans often struggle to access university due to low wages, high formal unemployment and uneven fees in proportion to this ratio. These fees are needed to ensure a decent education standard in Sierra Leonean Universities but often means these students miss out on the chance to enter tertiary education and are barred from significant socioeconomic opportunities. Currently the Government of Sierra Leone had admirably dedicated 25% of its annual budget towards primary and secondary education, however this increase does not cover tertiary education.

2. How do you intend to help students? -> The fundraiser aims to directly provide a scholarship for the students. This scholarship aims to completely cover tuition fees + maintenance (ranging from about (6k SLE -10k SLE which is about £215 - £400 per year) for their 4 years of education alongside a 2k SLE to support living expenses. Students will not be required to repay the money given and the scholarships are targeted towards poorer Sierra Leoneans. The scholarship funding will cost overall about 52k SLE for 4 Years worth of education or about £1.8k per student. Only £465 needs to be raised to guarantee a financial support for a years worth of education worth 13k SLE.

3. How can I help get involved? ->

4) How else do you intend to raise money? Asides from direct donations via the GoFundMe, we intend to raise money by selling preloved/vintage clothing. The clothing sourced primarily from donations and buying unique stock, will be sold online on Vinted and Depop (Reopening on the 11th of Feb) year around. When possible, we will also be selling our clothes in in person pop up stores around different parts of the UK.

5) How do you intend to use the funds made from selling clothes and direct donations? The fundraiser is intends on practising a 70:30 split in regards to the money made for a trial period of 3 months. 30% of this money is intended to go towards directly funding the scholarships and any other charity initiatives. 70% of the money is intended to go towards operation costs, this includes. Buying new products, securing spaces at pop up shops, paying for storage, paying for digital infrastructure and potentially paying for labour if needs be. Operation costs are essential, to ensuring that SLSEFundraiser is a long term project with a real impact on local education dynamics. Operation costs do not include paying any direct volunteers or myself with salaries. Until further notice i will not be using the profits made to directly support my own living expenses, everything gets reinvested directly into the fundraiser or into charity initiatives.

6) How Many Scholarships do you intend to fund? We are not capped in the amount of scholarships we would like to fund. Ideally we would like to raise enough money thats worth 3 students educations for about 4 years within our first year of running (Which comes up to 5.6k put directly into scholarships). If you keep up to date with our mailing list or social medias, we will announce when we have made enough money to fund 1 years worth of education.

7) What are the target universities for these scholarships. This fundraiser aims to fund scholarships to enter Sierra Leonean Universities rather than international ones due to the large upfront costs associated with funding an international scholarship. Sierra Leonean Universities such as Fourah Bay College and Njala University are strong performing schools who often partner with other British universities like UCL.

Anecdote:

In my most recent trip to Sierra Leone since 2019 the closest friendship i made whilst i was there was with a security guard called Taronka. A very knowledgeable and smart man who knew a lot about his faith (Islam) and music, but due to lacking the funds was unable to actually go to university after completing secondary school (despite achieving the grades to do so). Other men and women i met whilst in Sierra Leone were very kind and easy-going people who could not get formal education due to which significantly limited their socioeconomic opportunities and forced them into working jobs that paid very little and they did not want to do. Seeing this dynamic play out whilst i was fortunate enough to be born in a country where completing higher education of some sort is a norm, made me upset but more importantly made me realise more help is needed.

If you would like to keep up to date with our progress, please

Contact and other Links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slsefundraiser?igsh=MXI3Z2JlcWF4b2o0ZQ==

Mailing List Sign Up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe9u_rUjNxLgjF7ruEGAsAnDKDTCEwbTcGa3e5rar-saMZ3cw/viewform?usp=dialog

Vinted: vinted.co.uk/member/239011026