I am Gladys Mansaray, a third year LLB Honours student at the University of Makeni (UniMak). I went to the EducAid Secondary School in 2009. Before 2009, it was really not easy for my parents to pay my school fees. I got to know about EducAid, a free school that is providing good quality education. It was like a dream come true.
It was difficult for me at first because the learning system is more demanding in EducAid but as time went on I got used to it and sat my WASSCE (West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination). I was among the students that got the most outstanding results and EducAid helped me get a scholarship to university.
On 21st December 2017, we were part of a training conducted by the Law Clinic at UniMak on practical legal skills, lawyering skills and the tools needed to practice law. During the session, Lawyer Jalloh, our Head of Department, told Lawyer Lahai, one of our lecturers to tell me that I should wait for him after the training. I was worried at what the HoD might want from me. Another of the lecturers told me that it was an open secret that I had been selected with four other students to go to the University of Kent. I was overwhelmed. After the training, we met and were told that we had been selected not by favour of familiarity but because of merit and in particular for our academic performance.
Now, we are in the UK for the formal exchange programme called the Makeni – Kent Project which centres around the Law Clinic of both Universities. This is really a great honour for me / us because this has never happened in our university’s history.
I feel fortunate to have been chosen among the few women in my department.
I want to be a lawyer because I want to join hands with others to bring justice to the less privileged, the deprived persons in society who cannot afford to pay for the services of a legal practitioner.
Long Live EducAid!
Long Live UniMak!
Long Live Kent University!
EducAid is able to be a catalyst for young people whose potential goes unrealised if they do not access meaningful education.
If you would like to know more about EducAid’s work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, please go to www.educaid.org.uk
If you want to be sure that your donation to charity makes a difference to the lives of some of the most vulnerable young people in the world, please go to https://www.educaid.org.uk/get-involved/