During their visits to Sierra Leone, Betsy and Susanne Swint started to worry about how long the teachers will be able to continue their work in the school. In Sierra Leone, most schools are not supported by the government. Schools have to cover their expenses by tuition paid by parents. But what if children have no parents, or parents have no jobs? Then these teachers cannot get paid. These teachers teach, because they believe in the power of education. They believe that a new civil war can be prevented by giving students knowledge, which enables them to find jobs. The motto of the school is "Knowledge is wealth". But the teachers need to find jobs next to teaching, in order to make their living and support their families. Usually this is hard physical work, like gardening, brick making etc. Despite their ideals, the double responsibility of teaching and working for a living, is too heavy for many of them. In 2004 the school had 17 teachers, nearly three years later there are only 8. The photo shows them together with some of their collegues from the secundary school. 8 teachers for more than 400 students, of whom many are traumatised.
To ease the burden of the teachers, the foundation decided to support them with monthly allowances of about € 30 to cover basic costs of living. Therefore, we started to approach teams of teachers to financially adopt a teacher in Grafton, and donate € 30 per month. If you know a team which is interested in such an adoption for a certain period of time, please contact us. Because: without teachers, no education.

To enable all teachers to obtain their full qualifications, we also pay their annual fees for the Teachers College. So far three of them are now fully qualified.
At the end of 2008 we intiated the partial support of the teachers of the secondary school.