What we’ve accomplished - so far

 

Note from the Director, Sarah Armstrong

 

 I go to Sierra Leone a couple times 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 five separate programs with four different organizations up until now (June, 2008).  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 been supporting two projects under the direction of the Children of the Nations organization - the Inoculation Program and the 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, with the funding that our foundation provided, the program set up shop there and inoculated nearly 4,600 children, woman of childbearing age and pregnant women, immunizing them against tuberculosis, diphtheria, poliomyelitis, tetanus, measles and yellow fever. All of this took place over ten days in November and December, 2005.  The cost? 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. 

 

For school children: Again 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:  

  • The children who are participating come to school every day and on time; 
  • They're more active in class;
  • They're doing better academically;
  • They’re stronger and more energetic;
  • All children in the program passed the National Primary School Examination - with flying colors!

For preschoolers: We’ve also been supporting a program for badly malnourished preschool children. Each month we bring 20 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. 

 

 

Since the Launch, we’ve gone on to the next phase of the program to introduce Conflict Management to representatives from many secondary schools in the Northern Provinces.  We have had three gatherings of “Peace Club” representatives – those who participated in trainings we conducted in 2006 and 2007 and have agreed to act as the leaders of clubs that promote peace in their schools.  The children come to a school building in Port Loko for discussion about what is working in their respective areas and then others go back and share these best practices.

 

Through the trainings that have taken place in the past two years, we have been 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 non-violent behavior and are actively moving forward with their club activities.

 

When we have the money to support it, we’ll continue to expand the program until all 86 schools and 41,000 students are covered. 

 

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 three all-day workshops to train the selected students. We have one more workshop we hope to complete and then move into the next Phase of the program.

In Phase 3, planned to be implemented in 2008, the cadre will establish clubs in the schools throughout the country. The clubs will maintain a Resource Center with education materials and will 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.  There will many activities centered around Anti Corruption Day in Sierra Leone – December 9th.

 

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?