In Bo District, southern Sierra Leone, villagers can be seen hauling sand and stones under the sun. Their goal is simple but ambitious—to build a secondary school for their children. But what makes their story remarkable is not the construction itself, it’s how it began. This community decided to act before waiting for external help. They organized working groups, gathered resources, and began building with their own hands. When they later approached the NGO Street Child for support, they proposed a partnership: Street Child would supply materials, while villagers contributed sand and stones.
According to Elizabeth Gbanie, Program Officer for the WAVES Foundation (Women Against Violence and Exploitation in Society), this shift in mindset was the result of a new way of working—one introduced through the Global Fund for Children (GFC).
A New Model of Partnership
In recent years, GFC has launched a series of initiatives across West Africa focused on ending violence against girls and strengthening community leadership. Rather than funding isolated projects, GFC invests in women- and youth-led organizations like WAVES, supporting both their programs and institutional capacity to lead long-term change.
As part of this approach, GFC connected partners such as WAVES to learning opportunities at the Tostan Training Center (TTC) in Thiès, Senegal. Through the Introductory and Advanced Seminars on community-led development—and ongoing exchange via the LAFIA Community of Practice—partners learned how to mobilize local dialogue, build trust, and engage communities as equal decision-makers.
“The training completely changed how we work,” says Gbanie. “Before, projects were often led by us as implementers. Now, the community leads—we guide and support.”
From Dependence to Partnership
When WAVES revisited the Bo community months later, they found more than progress on a school—they found transformation. Villagers had organized into six teams, coordinating sand mining, brickmaking, and logistics. This same community later advocated for hospital renovations through collaboration with the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
“IRC had worked with them for years,” Gbanie explains, “but only after introducing the community-led approach did we begin seeing tangible results.”
Changing the Aid Paradigm
What’s happening in Sierra Leone reflects a broader shift across GFC’s network: communities are moving from being recipients of aid to leaders of development. By focusing on dialogue, shared accountability, and mutual learning, GFC’s model allows local organizations like WAVES to foster sustainable change even in fragile funding environments.
Through platforms like LAFIA, these organizations continue to share experiences, refine their strategies, and spread the principles of the Tostan approach across West Africa.
In Bo, the results speak for themselves. A new school is taking shape—not because it was donated, but because a community decided it was possible.