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What we’ve accomplished - so far
Note from the Director, Sarah Armstrong
I recently completed my seventh trip to Sierra Leone. I go there each year to meet with the heads of the programs we’re supporting and to see, firsthand, the people whom we’re helping. It is always a moving experience. We’ve funded six separate programs with four different organizations up until now, July 2009. Each of these programs is described in the following pages.
We often get asked how a young Foundation like ours decides where to start helping. It’s a good question. With so much to be done in Sierra Leone, with so much need everywhere, what should get our attention first? Our answer is simple - let’s start where we can save lives.
That’s why we’ve supported three projects under the direction of the Children of the Nations organization - the Inoculation Program and two Feeding Programs.
The Inoculation Program
In the rural areas, disease is commonplace. Typically, none of the children have ever been immunized against a number of preventable diseases. The worst of these rural areas is the Upper Banta Chiefdom in the Moyamba district. So we decided to start here, at the end of 2005, with a program that inoculated nearly 4,600 children, woman of childbearing age and pregnant women. We immunized them against tuberculosis, diphtheria, poliomyelitis, tetanus, measles and yellow fever at a cost of just 80 cents per person.
There were 409 children under one year...
...and 1,737 under five. In addition, 2,452 women were inoculated.
The Feeding Programs
When describing commonplace conditions in Sierra Leone’s rural areas, add malnutrition and starvation to disease. The great majority of children have never known what a full and nutritious meal looks like.
With our funding, Children of the Nations started a feeding program for school children in February 2006 in the same Moyamba district. Before the program began, children were weighed, their arm circumferences were measured and the condition of their skin and hair was noted (indicators of malnutrition).
Every school day since then, we’ve provided a nutritious meal - a dish of rice with a sauce of fish and beans for protein. The children in the program gained an average of 25% of their normal weight in just six months. One child, Amanata, was asked, "What was your body weight before you came here?" Amanata: "Small". "What is your body weight now?" Amanata: "Medium".
  
We started off feeding just 200 children each school day. Now we're feeding over 400 and there have been some very nice results:
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The children who are participating come to school every day and on time;
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They're more active in class;
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They're doing better academically;
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They’re stronger and more energetic;
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All children in the program passed the National Primary School Examination - with flying colors!
We’ve also been supporting a program for badly malnourished preschool children. Each month we bring a number of children into the program. We provide therapeutic feeding - up to four times a day - and teach their mothers how to properly feed them. We started this program in May 2006 and, so far, every group we’ve helped has had an average weight gain of two pounds in the month. We've also taught the mothers to make highly nutitious cereal for their children and have supplied them with seeds to grow the groundnuts, cassava and other foods in their own gardens.
  
The School Conflict Management Program
This program brings with it a different sense of “life-saving” but it is no less critical to Sierra Leone's future. On the “Organizations” page of this Web site, we described one of the serious consequences of the war: Children either actually fought in the civil war or were enormously affected by the violence that was all around them. For many of them, therefore, violence is how you resolve conflict.
To counter this, Children’s Learning Services has begun a program, with our funding, to teach nonviolent behavior in 86 secondary schools across the country. These schools have over 41,000 students and nearly 1,300 teachers.
In February 2006, we officially launched the program in a meeting in Makeni that brought together representatives from five districts. With 700 miles of virtually impassable roads connecting the headquarters of these districts, we helped with the logistical nightmare by funding the down payment on an all-wheel drive vehicle.
  
The next phase of the program introduced Conflict Management to representatives from many secondary schools in the Northern Provinces. We had three gatherings of "Peace Club" representatives – those who participated in the training sessions we conducted in 2006 and 2007 - and who now act as the leaders of clubs that promote peace in their schools.
Through the training sessions that we supported, we were able to implement "Peace Clubs" in 15 schools throughout the North – a total of nearly 8,000 students. The schools have planted Peace Poles to show their commitment to nonviolent behavior and are actively moving forward with their club activities.
Having got this program off the ground, it was picked up by Plan International, one of the oldest and largest international development agencies in the world.
The Anti-Corruption Program
The new Foreign Minister, Zainab Bangura, described corruption as the number one impediment to economic growth in Sierra Leone. It is so embedded in society that children do not even know what corruption is. To them, what they see happening around them is all they know.
To counter this, the BTA is implementing a three-phase program, with the National Accountability Group (NAG), to educate children and to establish Transparency/Anti-Corruption Clubs.
In Phase 1, we selected top Primary and Secondary School students to be trained to act as cadre in educating other students and in establishing these clubs. In Phase 2, we conducted four all-day workshops to train the selected students. In Phase 3, the cadre established clubs in schools throughout the country. The clubs maintain a Resource Center with education materials and carry on a range of activities that include poetry and essay contests on corruption issues, performing dramas that demonstrate moral and ethical behavior and conducting debates on the issues of corruption.
I was privileged to be present at the celebration of International Anti-Corruption Day last December with a gathering of hundreds of students from the areas in and around Freetown. After a parade, we held a meeting that included the Anti-Corruption Commissioner of Sierra Leone. the Human Rights Commissioner of Sierra Leone and the Director of National Accountability Group. I talked about how our supporters in the US want to help reduce, and eventually eliminate, corruption in Sierra Leone. Others in the meeting, all important stakeholders in the fight against corruption in their country, underscored the importance of this objective. Additionally, students in the BTA-funded Sewing Seeds of Integrity Program performed skits that demonstrated how to respond to corruption in the families, schools, workplace and communities. This program features an education module that spreads the anti-corruption message throughout primary and secondary schools. It aims to teach children to be "corrupt free" at an early age and share this message with all those with whom they connect.
The Market Women’s Association
The illiteracy rate among women in Sierra Leone is a staggering 76%. Thanks to a generous grant from the Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund (New York City), BTA and the Market Women’s Association organized, staffed and began literacy training for women in the capital city of Freetown.
The formal launch of the project was September 9, 2011 and training began for 90 women on September 12th. They are attending classes 9 hours a week spread out over three nightly sessions. Facilitators (teachers) are conducting the training in six different market locations with 15 students per location. The training will continue into December at which time we expect to be able to demonstrate basic - and much needed - literacy and market skills.
The US Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Michael Owen, attended the September launch. Later, he had this to say about the importance of the training: “What these Market Women lack in education they more than make up for with their spirit, enthusiasm, and determination. They have already accomplished so much, and with improved literacy, they can go on to play an even more important role in their ommunities. I wish them every success.”
I think the main lesson we learn from these programs is that it takes so little to start to make a difference in people’s lives. The money from our Foundation goes directly to the organizations who need it. After our board approved the Feeding Program, for example, we gave the director of Children of the Nations the money one afternoon in Freetown and, the next day, she went out to buy the milk, rice, fish and beans to feed the children.
Won’t you help us, please, with a donation ?
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