The GODWIN VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTER (GVTC) in Sierra Leone, West Africa opened its doors in 2011. From the start, the school has focused on training women who are disadvantaged either by poverty, sexual abuse, teenage pregnancies, and/or domestic violence. Most of these young women dropped out of school early and are chronically marginalized because of their lack of education and social status.
The Godwin Vocational Training Center exists
to give these women a second chance at an
education and to enable them to carve out a
career and one day own their own business
and become leaders in their community.
With its success, the GVTC has become not only a Vocational School but also a Preschool, Kindergarten, Primary School and Middle School. As a result, the current building has become too small to accommodate all of the students. The new facility will enable the Vocational School to add additional curriculum to their current list of classes in Catering, Tailoring & Dressmaking, Gara Tie-Dying, Art & Craft, Computer Studies, Hairdressing, Adult Literacy and Business Studies/Entrepreneurship. It will also bring all of the children’s care and schooling under the same roof; a big bonus in a country where, on average, it rains 100 inches during the six-month-long rainy season.
Our first big project was the construction of a two-story, 5,500 sq. ft. school for the Door International Academy in the village of Lungi, a coastal community located just above Freetown in Sierra Leone, West Africa. It was completed in 2017 and the final construction cost was $79,000, a modest $14.36 per sq.ft. Two of our board members, Steve and Jean Stiles, were in Lungi on April 15, 2017 and participated in the school's dedication ceremony, complete with ribbon cutting!
The Signpost MissionWorks team made a trip to Lungi in 2013 to bring much-needed supplies and to
provide in-service training to the staff of the Door International Academy.
Our team demonstrated how to teach with the various new materials and also built lasting relationships with the staff there in Lungi. This will be an on-going feature of Signpost MissionWorks and we plan to return to West Africa as soon as we can. It was on this trip that we promised to build them a school!
We’re at the end of a three-year program of funding to gain State certification for the teachers of the
Door International Academy. This opens up curriculum opportunities for them and insures validity for the school.
Ebola hit hard in Sierra Leone at the beginning of 2014 and people were desperate for basic essentials such as clean water and materials to maintain proper hygiene. Signpost MissionWorks teamed with the Door Christian Fellowship in Freetown to provide those materials, particularly to outlying areas.
Lungi is a fairly rural community and many children could not attend without the help of transportation. We purchased this bus for the school in 2013 and enrollment shot up soon afterward, not only because of the obvious solution to transportation needs, but also because the bus itself serves as a symbol of a school that is serious about serving the community.
In 2012, water diversion walls were constructed at the Door Christian Fellowship in the Wilberforce
Barracks suburb of Freetown. This was done to alleviate the flooding that occurs during their six-month rainy season each year.
