This year has seen an exciting transition in our senior leadership. We were thrilled to be joined by Tony Dogbe as Executive Director based in Ghana and Susan Place Everhart as CEO based in the UK.
We hope you enjoy reading the welcome thoughts from Susan and Tony below.
It has been an incredible pleasure and privilege to join Sabre Education this summer as its new CEO. My highly respected predecessor, Dominic Bond, built an award winning organisation recognised in the field of early childhood education for its innovative play-based kindergarten curriculum, its effective teacher training model on a multi-district level in Ghana, its strong ethos of partnership with the Ghanaian government and its contributions to national policy development and education reforms. Sabre’s strong team is delivering on our promise to affect systemic change towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2 on universal access to quality pre-primary education.
Sabre is now at a time of significant opportunity for growth and scaling our impact, through effective partnerships both inside Ghana and with organisations working across Africa. We are committed to building the evidence base of what is working in play-based early years education in Ghana and to sharing that broadly.
Sabre has ambitious plans, and I am proud to be leading the organisation into this next chapter of our history in partnership with our new Executive Director in Ghana, Tony Dogbe, who joined Sabre nine months ago. Tony is a highly experienced community development consultant and facilitator who has worked with government, non-government and private sector institutions throughout his esteemed career, and was deeply influential during the development of the 5-Year National Kindergarten Operational Plan to scale quality early childhood education across Ghana in 2012. I am thrilled to be working alongside Tony as we lead Sabre together into the years ahead.
“It’s a real pleasure to be working with Sabre as it offers me the opportunity to join in the implementation of one of the priority areas identified in the 2012 Kindergarten Operational Plan, i.e. teacher training. Like Sabre, I believe the foundation for success for a child is in quality early education learning through play. For me it is not a theory. I have seen it work in the lives of my two children, in the children who attended the Creative Holiday School we organised for 6-12 year olds in Kumasi, and I want it for every child in Ghana and Africa. This is what drives me”
This year of COVID-19 has certainly presented significant challenges to educational systems around the world. Over 40 million of the youngest schoolchildren globally have been missing out on early childhood education, just at a critical time in their brain development at 4-5 years old. Our work is more important than ever. All of us – teachers, parents, community leaders, civil society, government officials – must work together to ensure these vulnerable young minds can be re-engaged quickly in the months ahead as schools start to re-open.
At Sabre we worked hard during this COVID period to engage children and parents at home with age-appropriate educational radio broadcasts and call-in radio programmes, and have delivered virtual teacher training programmes to kindergarten teachers and education officials. Kindergartens will remain closed in Ghana until January, so we will continue to adapt our training materials for online delivery this autumn where technology allows, and will also provide a hybrid approach with face-to-face teacher training. There is a lot to do!
We thank all of our incredible supporters for your unwavering commitment to Sabre Education in this tumultuous year. Your partnership and dedication to Sabre’s mission is extraordinary. I look forward to meeting many of you and working together in the months and years ahead to ensure that thousands of young children have access to quality pre-primary education and can know a brighter future.
With warm regards,
Susan Place Everhart