Kabala, Sierra Leone

Photographer: Jenny Matthews

Year of Submission: 2016 (Educators Edition) 

Samuel Koroma lives and works in Kabala, a small rural town in the north of Sierra Leone. He’s a regular class teacher at the local Roman Catholic school. He’s also blind. Samuel has been blind from birth. Because of his disability, his parents were reluctant to spend money on his education. Instead, his school costs and teacher training were funded by organisations such as Leonard Cheshire Disability. “My future goal is to be a community development worker or a social worker. I also want to take a more active role in civil service in areas other than teaching, maybe working with my fellow disabled people,” he says. “I feel lucky to be doing this, I feel as though I am doing something. I feel like somebody who belongs, doing something with the rest of the world,” he says.