GLOBAL INCARNATOR'S (GI) EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE FOUNDER OF PEAGIE WOOBAY SCHOLARSHIP FUND

Mrs Peagie Woobay, Founder/Chief Executive Officer, Peagie Woobay Scholarship Fund

Global incarnator is an online news outlet. It serves as news distribution hub for social networks, tabloids in Sierra Leone and the global society. GI further plays the role of an information store for desk research. The exclusive interview with Peagie Woobay Scholarship fund was borne out of GI’s passion for innovation and the global campaign for increasing private sector (both profit-making and non-for-profit organisations) participation to nation building.

Global Incarnator: We understood you are the founder of Peagie Woobay Scholarship Fund, what inspired the establishment of the fund?

Peagie Woobay(Mrs): It is my story, my dream, to help educate as much girls in Sierra Leone as possible but especially to give a second chance to girls who had dropped out of school due to teenage pregnancy. I have walked the walk of these girls as a teenage mother at age 15 but did not drop out due to the support and second chance given to me by my parents, so it has always been my dream to help the teenage mums get a decent education and not be marginalised in society.

Global Incarnator: The managing editor for the GI informed us that, “he registered Voluntary Teachers’ Association in the Gambia smoothly without bribery and minimal protocol”, how did the registration process of the Peagie Woobay Scholarship fund go?   

Peagie Woobay (Mrs): It was bit slow but went well and I did not bribe anyone. I refused to bribe so maybe that is why it took longer for the certificate to be signed but I kept pressing the office of Social Welfare and Gender Affairs and got it after paying the registration fee of Le500, 000.00 (Five Hundred Thousand Leones) which is the right fee for a new Non-Governmental Organisation.

Global Incarnator: It is inevitable that every organisation has criteria for funding, what are your criteria for funding of your target group?

Peagie  Woobay(Mrs): To benefit from the fund, you need to be a genuine teenage mother that has dropped-out of school, marginalised in society and having the willingness to go back to school.

Global Incarnator: What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation?

Peagie Woobay: The uniqueness or strength of The Peagie Woobay Scholarship Fund is addressing the problems of both teen mums and their kids, putting the teenage mums back to school through the scheme, helping them with books and uniforms and providing free day cares for their kids. Our handicap is due to lack of vehicle to correctly as yet monitor our girls’ (target group) country wide as we would have wished. So I do not really call it weakness as it is a problem we can overcome in the future when funds will permit us to have a vehicle.

Global Incarnator: What modalities have you put in place to get feedback from your target group or clients?

Peagie Woobay: The foundation has well trained staffs that have the passion to carry out The Peagie Woobay dream of empowering girls through education. The staff is made up of nine members; a Country Director, Admin & Finance Officer and a Senior Adviser who shares Peagie’s dream of giving a second chance to the teenage mums, talking to parents to have healthy sex conversation with their girls and put them on preventive methods as and when necessary. The day cares staff makes sure the kids are well taken care of in a healthy friendly environment.

Global Incarnator: If there are feedbacks from your target group, what did the organisation gather from them?

Peagie Woobay: The girls have been in school for two terms and have been doing very well. They are monitored monthly and for the teenage mothers weekly. It was a bit difficult for the teenage mothers to integrate during the first term in school. Their peer groups were a bit sometimes hard on them through their looks but my team kept motivating them to be strong and think of the second chance they have had to go back to school and empower themselves. They are constantly reminded to have in mind their Role model Peagie who succeeded despite the stigma of a teenage mother. My team gathered that it is still not easy on them as after school, they pick up their kids from the centre and return home to a poverty stricken home. We plan to put in place a dedicated research team during the month of June to closely find out the reasons for the continuous problems encountered despite the help already given by the foundation. After the research procedures will be put in place to further alleviate poverty in the homes of the teenage mothers (Maybe set up microcredit systems for the mothers of the teenage mums).  

Global Incarnator: On the ground in Sierra Leone and beyond, how do you describe the support base for your organisation?

Peagie Woobay: The support base has been awesome which I immensely appreciate. It is principally made up of family, friends and people who have just seen my work done for the girls barely a year and have believed in me.

Global Incarnator: It is incumbent on every organisation to respond to the global call for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), meaning organisations are required to keep to their obligations to stakeholders, what is your organisation doing to meet its obligations to stakeholders (say employees, management, government,  pressure groups, target group, community in which the organisation is operating, etc.)?

Peagie Woobay: The foundation has the flair for keeping to the principle of accountability and transparency, and promoting sound reporting culture to stakeholders.  We keep records of our income and expenditure, justify our expenses, and there are checks and controls put in place to see that the funds are run correctly and effectively. Where over spending occurs it is automatically corrected and reduced. The employees are well trained to respect the monitoring and evaluation process put in place by the foundation, and there is a strong move to encourage sound employer-employee relationship. The foundation donated cash to Melquosh foundation in December 2013 for helping amputees in Sierra Leone. Furthermore, the foundation is working on donating in May 2014 to Rainbow Foundation aimed at helping rape victims in the country. Our on-going gift-aid donations are meant to ensure that communities benefit from our activities. In general, Peagie Woobay Scholarship Fund is striving hard to promote an amicable environment with stakeholders. Responding to the call for Corporate Social Responsibility is enshrined in the organisation’s programme.

Global Incarnator: How do you want to see the organisation within the next 10 years?

Peagie Woobay: I want to see the project sustained so it can grow and increase the number of beneficiaries in order to educate more girls and open more day care centres for the kids of teenage mothers to enable the drop-out teenage mothers in the country go back to school.

Global Incarnator: What other relevant issues do you want share about your organisation?

Peagie Woobay: The foundation needs funds to grow in order to empower more girls in Sierra Leone so they can become drivers of progress.

Global Incarnator: GI is concern about maintaining sound interviewee-interviewer relationship, what is your view about the interview?

Peagie Woobay: It has been very accurate and to the point. The interview puts the interviewee in a very comfortable position to answer the questions of the interviewer. It has been a pleasure answering the questions and in so doing I have grown as well in perspective.

Global Incarnator Managing Editor’s Comment

It is certain that the move by Peagie Woobay Scholarship Fund is the right direction, particularly in a country where we have lots of teenage mothers dropping out of school, either because of weak parental foundation or defective sex education in schools or peer group pressure or abuse by the privileged as a result of the poor background of the girl child. Sierra Leone is a nation where a large proportion of the population are women. Women are nation builders and are faced with extreme suffering during reproduction. There is gainsaying that, “behind any successful man there is a woman”. Women have a major role to play towards nation building and there is the need to empower them to contribute to the process. Looking at Sierra Leone, women remain to be marginalised in politics and socio-economic activities. We have a lot to do in appropriately responding to the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) that relates to the global call for empowering women. Empowering teenage mothers is a road map to the MDG concern for encouraging women in any society. I have to commend the Peagie Woobay Scholarship for working in line with the positive cause of empowering the girl child. It is time for us all at home and abroad to provide a voluntary support (whether material or moral or financial) to the organisation and other organisations pursuing women’s empowerment agenda. The time is ripe for us all to provide our individual inputs to the development process in Sierra Leone, and whatever little helps. As I said in a social gathering sometime back, “if you living in an untidy house with a relative (whether biological or national or continental or global) that does not believe in cleaning, you continue tidying-up, as it will come to a time his or her conscience will prompt him or her to follow”. We have reached a point in Sierra Leone where we do not need to look at others when contributing to the development process. There is a national mess out there to clear and we all have a stake in the cleansing.

According to an article published and authored by Tristan McConnell on Tuesday 28th August 2007 by the Times United Kingdom, “Sierra Leone brutal civil war ended in 2002, leaving a chartered economy and devastated population. Five years of peace have followed, during which hundreds of millions of pounds of aid money has poured into the country, including £40 million of aid from Britain.

Yet Sierra Leone has stubbornly refused to show signs of improvement; its six million people are the world’s second-poorest (only the people of Niger are worse off, according to the figures from the United Nation’s human development index).

`The private sector is the only way that Sierra Leone can work its way out of poverty,’ Mr. O’Cathasaigh argues- and he is not alone in believing this. In a speech on ending poverty delivered at the UN, Gordon Brown said: `Not only does business have the technology, the skills, the expertise for wealth and job creation....it is also in your best interest to help poor countries develop.”

The article is a wake-up call for our beloved country. We now need to collectively encourage the private sector (whether profit-making or not-for-profit organisation) to salvage the nation from its economic malaise. Creating the right environment for private sector entities can reduce the nation’s alarming unemployment and pave the way for a boast in the economy. It is irrefutable that a fair distribution of the nation’s resources for the benefit of the people that dwell in it can generate a happy and peaceful society for all.

Key:

Global Incarnator (a,b,c...z)-Tahoma

Peagie Woobay (a,b,c...z)-Cumbria

The Times United Kingdom (a,b,c...z)- BatangChe

Prince Foday

Managing Editor, Global Incarnator News Online