The OSEM Project: For Building a Better Future

May 11, 2021

On May 8th, the world celebrated ‘International Women’s Day’ in order to give thanks and recognize the courage and various accomplishments of women and girls.  So, in celebration of International Women’s Day, we at Gii would like to spotlight the OSEM project, one of our international collaboration efforts that hopes to spur change in the lives of the children in N’Zerekore, Guinea.

History of the OSEM Project

The fallout of the Liberian Civil War (1989-2003) left a great number of Liberian people seeking refuge in the surrounding countries. While the repatriation efforts, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), have proved to be successful in returning refugees back to their homelands, others, mostly women and children, were not able to return for various reasons such as their homes being destroyed in the fighting of the war.

Many of them ended up in the region of N’Zerekore, a city in the south-eastern corner of Guinea, where they were met with impoverished conditions that saw the children growing up in a place with no formal education system.  Seeing this growing problem, several former teachers, volunteers and the current Director of OSEM, Edmund Wilson, put together an English-speaking school in 2005 out of a rented three-room building.

Since then, the school has grown to having 116 children attend classes with 60% of the school’s current student body being girls.  To date, the school has been able to provide education to over 740 students that have treated it as a safe haven to go to while their parents work modest lives in the fields or in market stalls for long hours at a time.  All of this is done to give the children the education that they deserve, as well as provide the girls especially with new opportunities for the future.

OSEM and Gii

Since December 2020, Gii and OSEM have been in contact with one another in order to initiate training programs for their teachers to indirectly help the students by educating their teachers with up-to-date teaching methods.  

As of April 2021, the first of the teaching sessions has been provided, with additional training for the staff at OSEM scheduled for June and July of this year in order to not impede the progress of the current school semester.  

While Gii’s relationship with the OSEM project is fairly new, Gii hopes to continue this effort and bring more instructors with K-12 experience to help out with the teaching programs.

Future of the Project

As the OSEM project fits in with our overarching International Education Development Program, our hopes with this collaboration are to aid this effort to the best of our ability and collect more volunteers with K-12 professional teaching experience in order to provide these children with educators that will be able to fulfill their educational needs.  

With several other organizations coming in contact with Gii asking for similar training, our hope is that we will be able to ultimately provide a well-rounded educational foundation for these deserving children. We especially hope to give the young girls in these schools a greater opportunity to succeed later on in their lives.