By Foday Moriba Conteh
Orange Sierra Leone, the foremost telecommunications company operating in the country has been recognized for being highly committed towards giving assistance to the Government’s Free Quality Education Programme since August 2018 when the company unveiled its free quality education packages as part of rolling out the company’s corporate social responsibility.
Orange, being a multi service provider and a responsible corporate citizen has over the years placed emphasis on fulfilling its corporate social investment, through which they have invested about $ 400,000 mainly in the areas of Women Empowerment, Health, Education and the Environment. The company is also noted for being the first telecommunications company in Sierra Leone to contribute to the Government’s Free Quality Education (FQE) Agenda by pledging the sum of $1.5m in material assistance over a period of five years.
In rolling out its commitment, in 2019 Orange Sierra Leone, collaborating with the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education launched and rolled out sanitary pads to secondary school going pupils which came to an end on the 4th November, 2019 after dishing out two thousand (2000) menstrual hygiene packs to twenty targeted schools across the Western urban and rural areas.
The distribution process started at the Government Technical Secondary School in the West End of Freetown through to Vine Memorial, Rokel, Model, Tombo, Peninsula, Municipal, Ahmadiyya, St. Helena, Independence, FAWE Waterloo, Laura Dove, Murray Town Army and Services Juba Secondary schools, amongst others. Each of the twenty schools that were visited received one hundred packs with the items handed over to the school authorities.
Orange-SL in partnership with the Ministry of Basic Secondary School Education, ST Foundation Bridge the Digital Divide-Sierra Leone on Wednesday 19th February 2020 commissioned the Super Coders Project at the Annie Walsh Memorial Secondary School in the East End of Freetown and on Monday 21st February 2020 they also unveiled the Super Coders Scratch Program at the Albert Academy on Berry Street.
Few weeks ago, Orange, being the leading GSM Mobile operator in the country mindful of not only limiting itself to the implementation of the Super Coders Scratch Program in Freetown but also decided to take the project to the provinces.
On Tuesday 25th February 2020 they launched the Super Coders Project at the Harford Secondary School for Girls in the Moyamba District aimed at helping children make their own interactive Stories, Animations, Games, Music, and Art. Scratch has large collections or Libraries of cool graphics and fun sounds to play around with, which enables children to solve real life social issues through coding and animation.
In addition on Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th February 2020 the company also launched the Super Coders Project at the Ahmadiyya Secondary School and the Methodist Secondary School respectively within the Kenema District.
To demonstrate its decentralization drive, on Friday 28th February 2020 the company also launched the Super Coders Programme at the Kolenten Junior Secondary School in Kambia District.
With the implementation of these projects in the country Orange has demonstrated dogged commitment towards the successful implementation of the New Direction Free Quality Education Agenda in the country.
During a random interview conducted to sound the views of citizens across the country towards the implementation of both projects many have commended Orange for what they described as its timely interventions.
