Our Approach
The Rockdale Foundation partners with organizations that demonstrate a vision for systemic change, a commitment to ethical leadership, and the use of local knowledge and experience to address local challenges.
We believe strong leadership, collaboration, and the recognition and leveraging of existing community strengths are necessary to achieve sustainable impact.
“With the Rockdale Foundation, Partnership is partner- and not donor-led. The efforts of the partner are acknowledged and success is celebrated. Weaknesses are considered as opportunities to learn, share and strengthen for better performance.”
George Foday - Programme Manager
National Youth Awareness Forum
Our Commitments
Education
Quality teaching and school leadership that inspires and leads every student toward continued, lifelong learning and growth.
Children & Youth
Ensuring all children have the opportunity to participate in activities and relationships which build them up to be their best selves.
Community
Recognizing the importance of existing relationships, cultural practices, and structures that allow communities to thrive.
Our work:
Education Innovation Challenge Results
In 2019, the Government of Sierra Leone launched the Education Innovation Challenge (EIC). This initiative spanned the breadth of 5 service providers that supported 170 schools across 15 districts to improve foundational learning outcomes and improve context-relevant, scalable support initiatives. The Rockdale Foundation sponsored two of the five providers participating in this initiative, EducAid and NYAF. Collectively, these partners supported 90 of the 170 schools chosen for the pilot program that was implemented from 2020-2022.
The Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) recently launched the Zero Learning Poverty Plan, a path that aspires to ensure that all children can read fluently with comprehension by the end of the fourth grade. According to the MBSSE, a recent analysis of Sierra Leonean test scores revealed that most second grade students could not identify a single letter sound within a minute. By concentrating on teacher training and capacity building in foundational learning, Rockdale partners have shared promising results in this area as part of the EIC. For instance, one partner shared that by the end of one year, an average of 48% of early grade students in participating schools were able to demonstrate this skill, up from 6% at the beginning of the year. Similarly, another partner revealed that the percentage of children who could correctly identify letter sounds increased from 20% at the beginning of Grade 2 to 75% after a 6-month period, an improvement of 55 percentage points.
Read more about the EIC here.
Sierra Leone Innovation Challenge
From 2022-2025, the Government is applying the lessons learned from the EIC throughout Sierra Leone, partnering with the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), a hosted trust fund at UNICEF, to launch the largest education outcomes fund in history. The $18M program supports innovative interventions that improve literacy and numeracy learning outcomes of students at the primary level in 325 primary schools across all 16 districts, impacting 134,000 students.
Because local partners are closest to the challenges and have an intimate understanding of the cultural nuances necessary for success, one of the Rockdale Foundation’s goals is to invest in and elevate the voices of local leaders. After a highly competitive selection process, the Rockdale Foundation is proud to fund the work of Sierra Leone’s own National Youth Awareness Forum (NYAF) as one of the five service providers chosen to participate in this program, a significant step in further amplifying the voices of these local leaders.
As detailed by DSTI, “EOF is the first outcomes fund hosted by the United Nations within UNICEF as a scalable platform to partner with governments, donors, implementing partners, and investors around the world. EOF pays primarily on the basis of the results achieved, ensuring that taxpayer-funded domestic resources, aid, and philanthropic funds are only used to pay for what works.”
To read more about the SLEIC, click here.
TODAY’S STUDENTS,
TOMORROW’S LEADERS.
