Alton Bendu on Girl-Child Education… 11 PGHS Girls to Face WASSCE

The Prosperity Girls High School (PGHS) is poised take eleven girls from deprived backgrounds to gracefully face the 2017 Government WASSCE which has begun.

The girls are being camped at a place in the East end of the city after their rigorous school examinations. The camping will last for two months with support coming from Proprietor Alton Bendu who is keen to see girls rise from the fringe of consideration to becoming women of substance in the mainstream of global development.

In 2016, the school made its debut at WASSCE and broke a seventeen-year university requirement drought among girls in Rotifunk coming out with envied grades in respective faculties.

Since the reintegration of people in different communities in 1999 after the eleven-year civil war, this is the first time girls attending school in Rotifunk have got requirements for different cadre of tertiary institutions.

The school sent six pupils in which four got five subjects and above with one coming out with two subjects. The least got one subject. Three out of the six got university requirements with the remaining three settling for lower college expectations. The school has 66.6 passes with only 34.4 failures.

“This time, we are looking forward to getting ninety percent and above passes. We are going to put in the required effort to ensure that this happens. We have always tried to live up to expectations by helping girls from remote villages acquire better education,” said Mohamed Sonnah, the Acting Principal of PGHS.

Meanwhile, the school received compliments mid last year for topping the 2016 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the south. Since its opening in 2009, the PGHS has continued to lead education among boys and girls in the Moyamba District mainly with a dramatic push in 2016, covering a whole region in educational excellence.

The praises for all these have gone to Proprietor Alton Bendu who, during his first visit to his hometown after the war, realized that girls were given little opportunity to be in school with priority devoted to farm activities and early marriage. The spate of teenage pregnancy was on the rise when he established the PGHS with the aim of keeping girls in school and eventually lead them into changing society for the better.

The elders of Rotifunk Township have received the news with utter joy, thanking Proprietor Alton Bendu for putting a team of good teachers and for giving girls the sole opportunity to compete with boys for the furtherance of not only Rotifunk but also the country as a whole.

This week, the school is set to receive First Lady Sia Nyama and other dignitaries on a conducted tour of the school. This will mark the first time such a high powered delegation from the government circle is visiting the school. The visit stems from the laudable work Mr. Alton Bendu is doing to promote girl child education in deprived areas where teenage is pregnancy is rife.

Students from the Ullern and Eikeli High schools in Norway have been very pivotal to the existence of PGHS as they organize fundraising programmes each year in an effort to support the school through Alton Bendu.

Social workers and education enthusiasts say government should recognize Mr. Bendu for his selfless effort in bringing dignity to girls and helping poor parents.