
Catholic Women Speak is crowdfunding
Weʼre raising £4,800 to send £400 each month to the Byseee school project in Sierra Leone, providing a holistic education for girls and support for poor families.
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Catholic Women Speak (CWS) is raising funds to support Byseee Preparatory School for Girls and Day Care Centre in Freetown, Sierra Leone. We currently send £300 per month, which allows the school to run a feeding scheme as well as providing regular support for teachers' salaries, school uniforms and supplies and maintenance. Our funds have helped to dig a well which is providing fresh water for the school and the local community. The feeding scheme is our latest project, providing regular meals for under-nourished children, who often arrive at school hungry. We'd very much like to increase our monthly contribution to £400 which would allow them to offer the children two meals a week.
The school, which comes under the auspices of St Peter the Rock Parish in Calaba town in Freetown, is run by Yema (Gertrude) Jusufu and her sister Edita Fofana, who are both members of CWS. When asked to explain the puzzling spelling of the name "Byseee", Yema wrote that their late mother was asked to start a girls' school by parents in the community. She had six children - three girls and three boys - and she used the initials of each of her children to name the school:
Bernadette - Yema - Sydney - Edward - Elis - Edita = Byseee
Byseee school offers a wide range of educational and care facilities to women and children, particularly orphans, girls from broken homes, and single mothers. It follows the formal school curriculum but extends this to develop the children holistically and spiritually. The aim is to help them to recover a sense of personal dignity and self-esteem after the traumas of war and amidst the ongoing challenges of poverty, violence and abuse.
The holistic education and support offered by Byseee School, which is rooted in the Catholic tradition but informed by the particular challenges of gender-based inequality and violence against women and girls, expresses the ideals and visions of our global Catholic Women Speak network. While we are not a fund-raising or charitable enterprise, we seek to express our commitment to the promotion of the full human dignity of women and girls by offering practical support to Yema and Edita.
We are hoping to raise funds to enable the school to buy computers so that the older children can learn IT skills before going on to senior school.

To find out more about Catholic Women Speak, please visit our website. You can read more about the Bysee school project at this link.
Here is a short video we made of the children, staff and parents in the school: Byseee School and Community Project
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Updates
15
1 month ago
Catholic Women Speak
1 month agoThank you to all who have so generously and faithfully supported this project through the year. Here is a summary of our accounts for 2022. As you can see, there is a fairly significant shortfall each month, and we have had to reduce our monthly contribution from £400 to £300. We know that everything we send is much appreciated and enables Yema and Edita to provide care and support for the children and their families. We are grateful for every donation, however small, for it all goes towards helping us to express our solidarity with Byseee.
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2 months ago
Catholic Women Speak
2 months agoThank you to all who support this project so generously. We have reduced our monthly giving from £400 to £300, which allows Yema and Edita to provide the children with one meal a week, as well as supporting the cost of staffing, maintenance and supplies. We are now trying to raise funds to provide computers for the older children to learn computer skills to prepare for going to high school. The children have recently celebrated their sports day and this short video shows the fun they all had. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kFURPCvinFo
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3 months ago
Catholic Women Speak
3 months agoThank you to all who donate so faithfully to the Byseee school and community project supported by CWS. Yema Jusufu sends greetings and says, "Because the parents love the school for what you have been contributing to upgrade the school to what it is now, they have been helping around. It has not been easy but with your support I have been able to run the school." We have reduced our monthly donation to £300, because we've been unable to raise £400 per month. This has meant reducing the feeding scheme to one meal rather than two a week. Tina
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Catholic Women Speak started crowdfunding
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Supporters
106
Rachel Caseby
Feb 1, 2023
£20.00
Patricia
Feb 1, 2023
£10.00
Katie Humphrey
Feb 1, 2023
A small contribution along with prayers for all of the wonderful work you do x
£10.00
Mary Kennan
Feb 1, 2023
£20.00
Ann and Maureen
Feb 1, 2023
Delighted to be able to contribute to this very important project
£20.00
Ursuline High School Wimbledon
Jan 25, 2023
£1,603.67
Rachel Caseby
Jan 1, 2023
Happy New Year to everyone at the school!
£20.00

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What is crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding is a new type of fundraising where you can raise funds for your own personal cause, even if you're not a registered nonprofit.
The page owner is responsible for the distribution of funds raised.
About the fundraiser

Catholic Women Speak
CWS is an international forum of Catholic women committed to awareness-raising, theological education, solidarity and dialogue to promote the dignity and equality of women and girls in society and the Church. We support the Byseee school and community project in Sierra Leone.