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Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge

Improving children’s access to and quality of education, for increased learning outcomes.

  • Location

    Sierra Leone

  • Launch

    Sep 2022

  • Area

    Education & Employment

Collaborators & funding partners

  • Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

  • Education Outcomes Fund

  • Government of Sierra Leone

Delivery Partners

  • Rising Academy

  • Street Child

  • EducAid

Collaborators & funding partners

  • Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

  • Education Outcomes Fund

  • Government of Sierra Leone

Delivery Partners

  • Rising Academy

  • Street Child

  • EducAid

  • Mila founded and leads Bridges Outcomes Partnerships (BOP). At BOP, we work to radically improve human services and environmental initiatives to improve outcomes for people and value for society. Programmes BOP supports are dedicated to empowering people across the world to improve their lives, in areas ranging from education and wellbeing to housing, child protection, employment and environmental protection. Mila is on boards of Positive Families Partnership, Stronger Families, Forward, North East Lincolnshire Thrive, Ways to Wellness, Education Outcomes Partnerships, along with other family, employment, and refugee support focused programmes.

    Mila is also a Trustee for Clore Social Leadership, organisation dedicated to providing social leaders with world class leadership development.

    Prior to Bridges, Mila’s career spanned public, private, and third sector. Mila helped create and run Education Generation, a crowdsourcing social enterprise focused on enabling young leaders in low-and middle-income countries to participate in some of the world’s most forward-thinking education programmes.

  • Amit, Executive Director at Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, has been working with Bridges for the last 3 years with a focus on our work in low- and middle-income countries. During this time, Amit has supported the creation of Outcomes Partnerships related to:

    • Helping families stay together through family therapy in the UK
    • Improving quality of education provision in West Africa and South Asia
    • Plastics waste recycling in West Africa
    • Access to clean water in Southeast Asia
    • Employment opportunities in Turkey

    Prior to joining Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, Amit worked for Social Finance where he created some of the most innovative social impact bonds in the UK. Amit spent his early career in banking and consulting, after which he ran a consulting organisation and charity focused on innovation in education.

    Amit holds a Bachelor of Science from Nottingham University in the UK.

  • Ali’s role at BOP involves supporting the development of an international portfolio of impact bonds, with a focus on investments in education – including the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge and the Ghana Education Outcomes Programme.

    Prior to joining Bridges, Ali worked with Ark’s Education Partnership Group to drive process improvements in public and private organisations in West Africa and South-East Asia.

    Earlier in his career, Ali has worked with the World Bank and McKinsey on improving management and financial practices in the public sector. He has also led a tech-based startup, funded by Google, specialising in using technology for increased operational efficiency.

  • Andres is the Operations Lead for our international education projects, which fall under our SDG Outcomes initiative, contributing to achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals. These projects centre around improving the foundational numeracy and literacy skills for primary school students in Sierra Leone and Ghana.

    Andres has worked in the charity sector for close to 10 years, predominantly managing education projects for marginalised communities such as asylum seekers and refugees. Prior to his third sector work, Andres was a secondary school teacher in the UK and Australia. Andres holds a LLM in Human Rights law, alongside a postgraduate teaching degree.

  • Eduardo’s role as an Associate involves supporting the development of BOP’s international portfolio. Before this role, he worked as an Impact Analyst on our Refugee Better Outcomes Partnership project.

    Prior to joining Bridges, Eduardo was part of SpainNAB (a member of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing), and volunteered as a Project Manager for a Spanish NGO in Northern Uganda.

    Eduardo holds a BA in Business Management from ICADE Business School and an MSc in International Cooperation, Finance, and Development from the University of Rome Unitelma Sapienza.

Overview

The Sierra Leone Innovation Challenge is improving learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy for marginalised students.

The Sierra Leone Innovation Challenge (SLEIC) is a bold initiative to improve primary education in the country, and the largest outcomes fund for education globally.

Alongside The Education Outcomes Fund, the Government of Sierra Leone and others, BOP is improving learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy for marginalised students, especially girls, in primary schools across five geographical areas in the country.

We’re working with three of the five SLEIC delivery partner organisations to carry out this exciting programme: Rising Academy, Street Child and EducAid. As well as learning outcomes, our collaboration also tackles dated systemic challenges in public schools, such as lack of teacher ownership and capacity of voluntary teachers.

More information on SLEIC’s Year 2 results here, and a more detailed breakdown here.

Outcomes

Over 45,000 students have begun the programme in BOP’s dedicated geographies. After its second year of delivery, the overall SLEIC results are equivalent to gaining an entire extra year of schooling in the best performing education systems in sub-Saharan Africa.

  • 0

    Starts to the programme

  • $0.0m

    Outcomes achieved