The project aims to expand the Morifindugu Junior Secondary School in Sierra Leone, providing it with new classrooms and essential services (drinking water, toilets, chairs and desks), to facilitate access to education for a greater number of adolescents and improve the quality of learning.
In Sierra Leone, it is not easy to attend middle school. School dropout rates are very high: in the district of Koinadugu (to which Serekolia, the village protagonist of the AMU action, belongs) it is estimated that only one boy/girl in six attends middle school during adolescence. The reasons for dropping out, confirmed by UNICEF, are found in the long distances that separate the villages from the schools, which not everyone can afford and which in any case lead young people to move away from the protection of their families and their community; early pregnancies and marriages (the latter affect 30% of girls under 18) and the practice of female genital mutilation (86.1%). To increase the chances of school attendance, in 2013 the community of Serekolia itself built a makeshift building by starting a lower secondary school , approved in 2019 by the government. Attended by 210 students in only 3 classrooms, without any type of toilet , it is not able to accommodate all the students who would like to attend middle school. Thanks to the expansion project, many teenagers from Serekolia will not have to leave their families and will be able to study close to home, protected by their community. The community will also act as guardians for those students who come from the surrounding villages to attend middle school. In fact, local families, as an act of reciprocity, will offer them accommodation, food and supervision. 
