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What we’ve accomplished - so far
Note from the Director, Sarah Armstrong
I recently completed my eighth 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, May 2010. 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".
Musa Jongo is in 6th grade in the Moyamba district school. He took the National Primary School Examination on May 1 and everyone expects him to have easily passed when the results are announced in mid-August. Few could have imagined this when he first came to school in September, 2004. He was malnourished and had a rash all over his body. Every day he'd leave class to look for palm nuts which he'd crack open with a rock. This was lunch. He misbehaved in class and had trouble concentrating because he was always hungry. Now Musa is a model student and one of the brightest in the school. Each day after lunch, he asks his teachers if there will be "another BTA meal tomorrow". Their response makes him smile.
  
We started off feeding just 200 children each school day. Now we're feeding over 600 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 performing dramas that demonstrate moral and ethical behavior, conducting debates and running poetry and essay contests on corruption issues. In this last category, here's a poem written by a ten-year old girl, Olabisi Marilyn Thompson, a student in the Murraydeen Preparatory School. See if you don't agree that it is most remarkable.
What Do You Want from Me, Corruption?
Corruption is all the negatives of a human life.
Corruption has made me poor by spending more.
It has made me illiterate by asking me to pay more,
Even my text books "Not for Sale" are sold to me.
Corruption has snatched my academic scholarship and given it to a rich man's son.
It has made me malnourished and is now abandoning me in the street.
It killed my parent and is now around me.
What do you want from me, Corruption?
Corruption asked me to pay for double surgery, when I only needed one.
It has transformed our lives from honest to dishonest citizens.
It has brought about hatred, malice and enemies for life.
What do you want from me, Corruption?
Corruption has taken my pride and dignity,
Leaving me an orphan and still demanding more.
What do you want from me, Corruption, to have the same surname as you?
That, I will not do, but I will always stand above you.
The Market Women’s Association
The illiteracy rate among women in Sierra Leone is a staggering 85%. To counter this, we launched a program to teach women how to read and write as well as showing them how to make and sell things in the local market. We began by training a cadre of 50 women. With future funding, this group of women will conduct classes in literacy and market skills in the capital city of Freetown. The City Council has approved our request to be allowed to use the Freetown markets for evening adult literacy classes. The Ministry of Trade has also approved a grant for the installation of a cold room for the women to store the products they’ll sell in the market.
Memuna Bonglor is one of the cadre of 50 women. While she will use her training to help other women, she has already used it to help herself. Her husband had abandoned her while she was awaiting the birth of their first child. This could have marked the end of the road for her but, instead, she used her training to start a business - raising a small amount of money to sell what we might call "Fish ball sandwiches" in the marketplace. She maintains her own business records and is trying to develop enough equity to apply for a loan that would enable her to diversify.
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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