By Mohamed Mansaray in Kenema.

At the Kenema City Council (KCC) Hall in Kenema recently, members of the Kenema Community including school going pupils were in attendance for Pikin Tab programme.

Giving the overview of the programme, Bernard Ndi the Director of Imagine Worldwide Programme told participants that Imagine Worldwide in collaboration with the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education, implements a Foundational- digital learning programme baptized “fondi” by the government of Sierra Leone as the Pikin Tab Programme. “It is a programme that seeks to promote foundational literacy and numeracy with the overall goal of getting Children to reach their full potential as productive citizens”.

Director Ndi said, his Organisation is targeting all the 16 districts of Sierra Leone but currently implinenting in 11 of the 16 adding that by March, 2027, they would scale into the remaining five. The five remaining districts are Western Area Rural District, Bombali District, Kono, Pujehun and Kambia District.

Talking about the aims and objectives of the project, Mr. Bernard Ndi told members of the Community that the main overall aim of the project is to build children who lives up to their full potential by strengthening their education through basic literacy, numeracy and the ability to read.

A few laptops computers and projectors were presented to the Government Secondary School in Kenema by the Ministry onbehalf of the United Nations office for project services not by imagine worldwide.

There are few implinenting partners for the project and SEND is the leading partner in Kenema District amongst other Districts. Plan International Sierra Leone, VSO, Educate and Rising Academies. The above are the five partners that they are working with and that their main partners remains  the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education because they provide the Technical oversight and even the policy mandate for Imagine to be able to undertake the Programme.

According to Bernard Ndi, the Director of Imagine Worldwide Programme, their plan is to meet a minimum of 50 percent of the public schools in Sierra Leone within 5 years depending on how government defines that scale out plan.

The project is funded by individual donors across the world. Imagine continues to work with the government using the result of the programme to mobilize additional funding.

Talking about the challenges, Bernard Ndi, Director of Programme, Imagine Worldwide, highlighted three amongst others. First is the issue of Teachers, the issue of children’s attendance-enrollment and attendance in school. “We have schools where on certain days, like market days, you will not find a single child in the school adding that with all of the investments that government is doing, government partners  are doing, if you go to school and the children are not serving these opportunities, it is a wasted investment adding that there is also the infrastructure issue that we have across the education sector, he concluded.

Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Monday, 14th October 2026 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)