Milton Margai School for the Blind Sierra Leone

Our first contact came about in 2006 when we were invited to attend the 50th anniversary celebrations at Dorton House,with whom Milton Margai school have a long association. We then met again at Canterbury Cathedral when Vision helped out funding the Milton Margai School Choir concert.

We set up the Milton Margai building fund and as a result 2 accommodation blocks and a vocational teaching centre were completed. In June 2008 we received a letter confirming completion of the construction work. They had a grand opening and the buildings are now fully I use.

Why were these building necessary?

• There are 10 teachers on the teaching roll, including 5 who are blind. Most of them live out of campus.
• As a school for the blind, accommodation facilities should be provided for its teachers, especially so, when the blind teachers live about 5 miles and more away. Priority is not accorded to them in public transports and anywhere they find themselves.
• Public transporters most times refuse to carry them on board their vehicles as they claim it is time wasting and they are not in a position to render help.
• Our blind teachers are most of the time very late for school because of the above highlighted constraints and even when they come to school, they are tired and worn out as a result of the strains mentioned.
• A blind teachers always travels with a sighted guide which makes transportation costs doubled for him/her, and more often than not, these guides may be their own school-going children or wards, or husbands/wives, who will surely miss their schools, their work places, and daily activities.
• House owners are reluctant to rent their houses to blind people.
• The vocational block fulfills one of the criteria for a Special Needs School – that is, providing adequate facilities and conducive teaching/learning and boarding environment for its pupils and staff, and accomplishing them will enable the pupils and staff to strive forward, live in enabling conditions so that they too will be self-sufficient, self-reliant and become useful and responsible members of society.