Message From The Principal
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Youth Resource Academy (YRA). The main goal of YRA is to sustain peace and stability by eradicating poverty among the less privileged through access to quality vocational, livelihood and civic education leading to permanent employment, economic independence, a positive mindset and peaceful coexistence in Sierra Leone. We primarily welcome students from underprivileged and low-income backgrounds. At YRA, no one is better than the other as we treat every student equally regardless of ethnic, religious, cultural, social, or gender identity.
The broader dream of YRA started in 2014 mainly with information and communication technology (ICT) as a training offshoot of Youth in Action for Development (YAD), which benefited hundreds of underprivileged youths in Kenema city. Through gradual evolvement, YRA has become a massive educational facility occupying a storey building with 10 well-equipped classrooms, 2 sport/fitness halls, offices, toilets and a digital library powered by a 15kw solar system. YRA now boasts of 150 to 200 students enrolled in diverse training programmes with 16 trained and qualified tutors. YRA was officially recognized by the Ministry of Technical and Higher Education in March 2020 as a TVET institute in line with the 2004 Education Act and the two strategic pillars of TVET policy adopted in 2019: Enhancing Access to TVET Programmes and Developing Skills for Jobs.
Furthermore, the government`s “Free Quality Education” programme is a dream we cherish, share and promote at all costs. You may be surprised to learn that our courses are 100% free of cost. Even the uniforms and course materials you pay for are less than 50% of their actual costs. We charge our students on cost recovery for uniforms and relevant course materials because our motive is not to generate personal wealth but rather to pave their way to self-reliance and economic independence. However, we would like to remind all students that there is no free lunch in this world. Therefore, after going through our honest and straightforward application process leading to your successful admission, we will urge you and your caretakers/parents to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that compels you to take the course seriously and pursue it to completion. If you fail to complete the course without a realistic and conceivable reason, your caretaker/parent will be obliged to pay the full cost of the period and the resources you wasted at YRA. Therefore, you must seek our professional advice and honestly know what you want before applying for our admission.
Far deep-rooted in YAD`s conflict eradication and peacebuilding ambition, YRA is inclined to blend its courses with sound and attractive skills, livelihood and civic education programmes that instill into the students the feeling of being responsible national and global citizens. YRA positions itself as a first choice in Kenema district and the entire eastern region. It is equipped to offer its trainees sufficient and relevant entrepreneurial skills so as to prepare them to play their role towards wealth and employment creation in the Sierra Leonean business environment. At YRA, we deliver quality education to learners through inspired innovation, creativity, reliability and responsiveness with the utmost goal of turning the candidates into employable candidates at all cost.
At YRA, we teach our students; we don’t deceive them with certificates without merit. So if your intention is to (only) disparage through our courses and get a certificate, then you are in the wrong environment. But if you want to learn, understand and apply the knowledge, you must listen to your tutors patiently, do all class tasks diligently and learn with dignity and respect.
As a vocational institute, we shall continue to provide demand-driven courses and ensure our graduates are highly skilled and of good conduct in order to give them a competitive edge over the others and enable them to play a vital role in the realization of our institutional goal and vision which we believe shall accelerate the attainment of sustainable peace and socioeconomic development in Sierra Leone.
Yours Sincerely
Agnes Sam (Mrs)