Foundation for Advocacy and Literacy Development- FFALD

I am motivated to take part in the Elevate Prize program in order to raise strong advocacy campaign on leadership development, marketing and visibility that ‘Leave no one behind’ and break the barriers of marginalization and exclusion for an inclusive society for young people’s growth and leadership development. The right of young people deserves to be honored like everyone else because young people experiences higher rates of marginalization, unemployment and also faces additional barriers in their life.

Therefore, I will endeavour to engage all relevant stakeholders including the president and members of parliament to support this program to put an end to all forms of marginalization and exclusion of young people. And eventually, this will advance the growth and development of young people and serve as a good practice which in turn can be replicated appropriately.

I will use the Elevate prize to establish and construct a training resource center that will enhance education, leadership development, marketing and job creation for young people especially girls (women) thereby removing them from streets begging and prostitution.

I am the current Executive Director of Foundation for Advocacy and Literacy Development (FFALD) were I have developed to be a dedicated and dynamic Advocate; Motivational Speaker, Career Coach with strong passion for community and human development.

Recently, I participated on the voices for inclusion projects in the Netherlands through the pushing boundaries in advocacy for inclusion. I was able to work with colleagues from five different countries namely; Indonesia, Philippine, Rwanda, Nigeria and the Netherlands through several advocacy sessions to come up with realistic solutions to tackle marginalization and exclusion of young people.

My organization mission is to advocate, protect and build the educational capacity of vulnerable groups through advocacy, educational and human rights trainings. And my future goal is to see that young people achieve their full potentials and takes leadership position in every aspect of their life especially in governance and business.

I am working in collaboration with a broad section of community people, public and private institutions to help solve the problem of illiteracy, marginalization and job creation for young people in the country. I have been advocating through the media, float parades and organize capacity building workshops.  Unimaginably, there are 750 million people around the world that can't read a single word and another 2 billion struggles to read a sentence. (Source: World Literacy Foundation 2020 report). And 69.3 % of Sierra Leone male population is illiterate while 80.0% female population is also illiterate. (Source: Sierra Leone Non formal Education 2020 report).

This reality has a negative social and economic impact such as poor health outcomes, welfare dependency, gender inequality, unemployment and increase criminal activities. However, I believe that enhancing literacy levels is essential to economic development and to the well-being of young people nationwide. Literacy is key to break the cycle of poverty; it leads us to a stronger and healthier community with a more talented youthful workforce. FFALD serves as a pivotal advocacy platform that coordinates major advocacy campaigns and intervention on specific levels in a systematic manner such as policy, institutional, community, work or business places. 

For many years, millions of dollars have been spent on programs that hardly advance the growth and development of young people (young girls and women are more negatively impacted). This explains why many young people are still ‘left behind’ because little or no adequate capacity building trainings and leadership development programs are geared towards their growth.  

Therefore, we are innovating the establishment of a digital training resource learning center that will enhance education, leadership development; marketing and job creation for young people especially girls and women in Sierra Leone. And succinctly, bringing sustainable workable new ideas to help eliminate all forms of marginalization, exclusion and deprivation that young people usually encounter in their leadership development aspiration in all aspects of their life. 

Majority of the beneficiaries of our training are making good the skills and experiences acquired from our skills training. They have become business people creating employment opportunities for other young people. Therefore making an impact within their locality.

Because of the great impact that our organization is making within the community there is huge demand for the enhancement and continuation of our programs.

Therefore, we are in the process of expanding our activities in order to reach out to more young people in the country. We are projecting that by 2025, we should have about 8,000 young people being trained on literacy, leadership, marketing and development programs.

This will contribute greatly to help solve the problems of high rate of illiteracy, uneducated and unskilled young people and strengthen their educational capacities to have leadership skills and increase their economic potentials and become self-reliance.