Thread by @pjskids

Last Saturday, we celebrated a big milestone @risingacademies: our first cohort of Rising students became our first Rising alumni👇. This is a special group, and I want to tell you the story of one of them. THREAD (1/x)

It’s a story that starts in tragedy. 10 years ago, I was at home in Freetown when Kadi, my housekeeper, knocked on the door. She looked in a terrible state. Her newborn baby, only a few weeks old, was very sick and she was taking him to the hospital. (2/x)

Within two weeks the unthinkable had happened. The baby was dead. So was Kadi. It was so sudden. No one could explain it. I learned later that it was probably from complications that hadn’t been picked up at the time of the birth.

She was 29. (3/x)

The funeral took place at her church. The service was part moving tribute, part terrifying fire and brimstone. Afterwards we processed through the streets of Lumley, ending up at a little restaurant where we sat on plastic chairs and drank sodas. (4/x)

I went to offer my condolences to her husband and family. I chose a chair next to Jann, Kadi’s elder son, the baby’s 7 year old big brother. He looked at me and silently put his hand on my knee, as if he were trying comfort *me*. I didn’t know what to say. (5/x)

Fast forward to Nov 2014. I’ve spent a year trying to set up @risingacademies. Things have not exactly gone to plan. The Ebola epidemic is accelerating. Just before we were due to launch our pilot school, Government announced that schools would not re-open for the new year. (6/x)

Feeling like we’d made a promise to our students that we couldn’t break, the brave members of our founding teacher team had started visiting parents’ homes, providing daily health screening and basic literacy and numeracy classes to small groups of our kids. (7/x)

One of them was the indomitable Mariatu Sesay (pictured here MCing Saturday's ceremony). I knew we had a special talent on our hands the moment I saw Mariatu role-playing a student at her first teacher training. Her impression of a moody teenager was terrifyingly believable (8/x)

Mariatu became a star teacher coach, then head of school and now school performance manager, overseeing a cluster of schools in our partnership with the Government, as well as helping voice the radio lessons Rising has been delivering as part of the national covid response (9/x)

But back then, she was a new Rising teacher, leading home schooling classes out of the basement @DooleyKate’s house. One of the kids in the group was the son of Kate’s driver.

You know where this is going. (10/x)

One day, I get an email from Kate. “My driver ended up sending his son to one of your classes and they are SO happy”, she wrote.

"Also, he just told me that he thinks his late wife (the boy’s mother) worked for you.” (11/x)

Sure enough, it was Jann. He was attending our home schooling classes, and when Ebola abated and schools could reopen, he joined our inaugural cohort of Grade 7 junior secondary students at our very first school in Freetown (12/x)

Six years later, the end of his secondary schooling delayed by covid just as its start had been delayed by Ebola, Jann graduated from senior secondary.

He’s about 6ft4 these days, and about 80% of that is his legs. (13/x)

Jann says he wants to be a sanitation engineer. If losing his mother couldn’t stop him, if Ebola couldn’t stop him, and if coronavirus couldn’t stop him, I’m not sure anything will.

No wonder his dad's so proud. (14/x)

I’m gutted I couldn’t be there to watch Jann and his classmates reach this milestone, but I’m so proud - and so grateful. Without them, there would be no Rising.

I hope they learned a few things during their time with us. We certainly learned a hell of a lot from them. (15/x)

When we started Rising it was in the belief that young people like Jann deserved a better quality of education - one that left them truly ready for life after school, in further study, the workplace or as leaders and role models in their family, community and country. (16/x)

The true test of whether we have been successful is therefore not just who they are today but who they will become tomorrow. I can’t wait to find out.

Once Rising, always Rising. (17/17)

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