By Amin Kef Sesay
The One Student One Radio Campaign continues as the Adonis Abboud Trust Fund (AATF) and Pikin Bizness targeted the Unique International Academy in Kono district where the distribution was spearheaded by Miss Sia Christiana Johnson, 1st runner up for the Miss Sierra Leone 2019.
The aforementioned school has an outstanding history of training their pupils in terms of news reading, debate and presentation through a union called the Literary and Debating Society (L&DS).
Against such a backdrop, the school administration was amazingly delighted as the gift was totally unexpected and thinking of how those radios will benefit the pupils, they were indeed thankful and grateful.
However, the Principal took it upon himself to orchestrate and organize the deserving 30 pupils that should be eligible to receive the radios from JSS 1 to SSS 3.
His exact words were: “We are not going to give out the radios to the 30 students that will be receiving them by looking at whether their parents can afford them or not, but we are going to give them because they deserve them.”
The students, likewise, were delighted and quoting from the speech that Dr. Adonis Abboud presented, the Head Girl, in her vote of thanks, admitted the vitality of owning a radio despite the fact that they haven’t been paying much attention to listening to radios.
She further expressed her gratitude, on behalf of the administration and her fellow pupils, to the PIKIN BIZNESS & Adonis Abboud Trust Fund (AATF) for being so considerate.
In an interview granted to newsmen that were present, the pupils promised to make good use of the Radios and by that they mean, listening to news and sharing what they have learnt with colleagues that were less fortunate.
Indeed, seeing the lights in their eyes was a sight to behold.
Chairman of Pikin Bizness and Adonis Abboud Trust Fund, Dr. Adonis Abboud, said that the move by the organization is a way of complementing Government’s Free Quality Education initiative and the provision of the 700 Radios to various schools is geared towards allowing pupils to stay abreast with national as well as international events and other news, which will eventually boost their general knowledge.
More selected schools nationwide have so far benefitted from the gesture, adding that their ultimate goal is for all pupils to own such useful communication gadgets, furthering that he is of the conviction that other donors will emulate their gesture and help reach more pupils.
It is on record that some of them were unable to benefit from the Government Radio Teaching program, which was instituted by the Government with technical support from UNFPA as a direct response to the COVID-19 outbreak, which led to the closure of schools, because of the unavailability of radios, but the donated radios will help them greatly.
