More on the Healthcare Visit Update 2

There has been much interest in this opportunity to give real input into the healthcare of a very poor community.
Currently 2 GPs, 2 nurses, two students on health related courses and one young lady with previous experience in West Africa have expressed an interest in coming on the visit in March.

The orientation day is likely to be on Thursday 3rd December, and participants will  get full details very soon.

This initiative comes at a critical time in Sierra Leone's attempts to improve its healthcare provison.

The President has just sacked the Health Minister.  Full story below from the BBC dated 4 November 2009.

The President, Ernest Bai Koroma

Sierra Leone's president has sacked two of his ministers, one of whom has been indicted for corruption.

Health Minister Sheku Tijan Koroma appeared in court on Wednesday charged with illegally awarding contracts.
He is the first minister to be charged with corruption since President Ernest Bai Koroma came to power two years ago.

No reason was given for the dismissal of the other official, Leonard Balogun Koroma, who is minister in the vice-president's office.
Mr Koroma promised to crack down on corruption when he won elections in 2007

A few weeks previously the Health Ministry had started the closure of 44 illegal and unregistered clinics, one of which is in the vicinity of the Looking Town Schools and township.  This has led to the local fear that the provision of health facilities is becoming much worse, rather than better.

There is still the chance to be part of this trip and you do not need to have a healthcare background, only an interest in the topic.  Please e-mail tswindaleuk@yahoo.co.uk to register an interest.

New Building - The Urgent need!

The plan for the new building, which is to house an admin centre including a library, and classrooms which will be used for the Secondary School and, out of school hours, the vocational studies students.

Desperately needed because

Due to the good academic and moral ethos of the school many parents want their children to go. The Staff see the need and want to help. Extra space is urgently needed.

The Primary and Secondary Schools, using the same building on a rota system, creates a difficult situation which does not help learning.Vocational studies students have nowhere to go during the rainy season when they cannot work outside.

There is no other Vocational Training Centre in the area, which is one of the poorest and depressed in Freetown.

Primary occupations are gardening, charcoal burning and collecting firewood none of which generate a steady income. Most houses in Looking Town have leaking roofs and poor or no toilet facilities.

Many parents are poverty stricken. Many families have only one meal a day. Their children become the breadwinners and are exposed to moral and physical danger. For economic reasons many young girls are forced into either an early marriage or prostitution.

Schooling and vocational training give hope and are essential to lift people out of poverty.

Some pictures of vocational students at work

Vocational students are doing fine in the sun, rain is a different matter.

Sewing machines outside - impossible if it is wet!

Carpentry training. Making desks and benches for the school

Phase One the Foundations is already done.

This is the present state of the building work

Phase Two    The Super structure, the walls, supporting columns and beams is costed at £1655.

Phase Three   Roofing is estimated to cost  £1982.

Phase Four     Completion - finishing and plastering, the ceiling, windows and doors, and painting at a cost of £6461.

Total cost is just over £10,000

The season for building, the dry season is starting around the end of November and continues to late May.  When the team goes out in March it would be great to see it all taking shape.

Anyone wishing to give a donation (which can now be gift aided) or to help in fund-raising please contact us. details below.

Any Able Bodied Men who would like to come to either help with physical work in the healthcare sector, e.g. building pit latrines, if this is identified as a need, or with the new school building, would be most welcome.

Further details from tswindaleuk@yahoo.co.uk  or on 0800 9707571

Moving on (1)

I have found this clip from Bill Johnson very challenging. Some readers may never have heard anything like it, but followers of Jesus Christ are pushing back the darkness that still covers the earth. This may involve building schools and hospitals, ensuring the best care for orphans, and seeking jobs and an income for all. It involves seeking a safe and healthy environment in which to live. But is there more to life than that?

Could what Bill Johnson describes as happening in Mozambique happen elsewhere?
Sierra Leone, the UK, Germany, United States, Canada?

Community Healthcare Visit - Update 1

We have had a number of very positive enquiries about this trip and hope to arrange a date for the Orientation Day (likely to be a weekday) shortly.

Suggested Dates  28 February - 6th or 8th March

Flight  - Freetown Flyer from Heathrow operated by BMI

Accommodation.  Likely to be the hotel used by the last team to visit, a good standard and very near to the community we are working with.  The hotel 5/10 is owned by the Teachers' Union in Sierra Leone and built in co-operation with a charity started by a Sierra Leonean in Denmark.  It is called 5/10 because the 5th October is World Teachers Day.

Hotel 5/10

Hotel Dining Room

Cost:  Up to £1,000 in total, including flight, accommodation, transport, meals, purchases and gifts you may wish to give towards individuals. 

Medical matters.  Please consult your GP about vaccinations and anti-malaria tablets.  For Sierra Leone, courses or boosters usually advised are: diphtheria; tetanus; poliomyelitis; hepatitis A; typhoid; yellow fever.

Please see the first article, Community Healthcare in Freetown, for details of this visit.

Ghost Schools - a problem for us too!

We have reached a milestone with the Primary School.  After a school has been running for three years it  becomes eligible to apply for financial support from the government. But, as Alpha has said in the past on a number of occasions, "This is a problem we are having here".  The problem this time - corruption.  The Ministry of Education was under investigation.

One of the New Era Primary School pupils

Lansana Fofana,  writing from Freetown in September 2009, has the story.
 'Magnus Kamara is a school inspector with a difference. He has been hired to find schools that don't exist.
"It has been a shocking experience. In some of the towns and villages we visited, there were neither school structures nor genuine teachers, but the government was paying salaries and subsidies to them, on a monthly basis."

The Education Minister, Minkailu Bah, has moved swiftly to end the fraud.  "This syndicate works because staff of my ministry, including supervisors and education secretaries, connive with officials from the accountant general's office, to carry out the act," Bah adds.'

After investigation, the Department is up and running again and if all goes to plan, the teachers' salaries in the Primary School will be paid by the government from January next year.        This will allow our finances to strengthen the Secondary School and further developments.

To read Lansana Fofana's article on "Ghost Schools" go to  http://allafrica.com/stories/200905080007.html

Community Healthcare in Freetown - Join us!

If you live in the United Kingdom it is easy to take the National Health Service for granted.  We have three children in their twenties and late teens. Two of them have needed medical help. One to survive being born eleven weeks premature and another to overcome a cleft lip and palate. Probably neither would have come through if they had been born in Sierra Leone.

In a poor country, illness is frequently the result of polluted water and insanitary conditions. This is exacerbated by malnutrition, poor education, and the lack of affordable treatments and preventative measures such as mosquito nets.

In Sierra Leone life expectancy at birth of a male is 39 years and a female is 44 years. (The UK average is 79 years). For every 1000 live births, 154 babies are likely to die before their first birthday. 50% of the population is undernourished, and to make things more difficult only 47% of the men and 24% of the women over 15 years of age can read and write.

We can do something about it.  
We are looking to visit Sierra Leone in the first week of March 2010 with a team of people to train and empower local people in basic healthcare principles.

We shall be lead in this by Linden Boothby of Links International. She has a passion for the poor and has lived in Africa working on healthcare-related projects. Having been a manager in a primary care trust in the UK, she brings professional-level skills to help us develop our community healthcare work.

Linden Boothby

We wish to send out a team made up of enthusiastic volunteers, good communicators and people passionate about healthcare.

 What will happen?

Following a needs assessment, training is done using a modular manual. The team will teach healthcare principles to influencers and trainers within the community on the understanding of health in its broadest holistic sense.

 Subjects covered by the modules range from the importance of clean water to sexually transmitted diseases.

The training has been so successful that

• Child mortality rates have been drastically reduced by between 50-80% in many areas around the world.
• A team was sent to train delegates from Nelson Mandela’s home village in South Africa, at his personal invitation.
• Our work has also inspired involvement from regional government, keen to work with us.
• All of the teaching is based on Christian principles and many people begin a relationship with Jesus as a direct result of the transformation that comes to their communities through the training.

The area the team is seeking to reach

(Please click on the photo to enlarge it. Note the housing and communal use of the stream)

They would all benefit

The school's daily supply of water

We shall be arranging an orientation day. This would be from around 10.00am to 4.0pm with a break for lunch. Anyone wishing to come on the trip should make every effort to attend this. To express an interest please contact me, Ted, on tswindaleuk@yahoo.co.uk

I asked Linden what her hope for the visit would be. She replied, "My hope is always that the team will fall in love with the people they meet and teach and that they will want to commit to going back there several times (by which time the community should be flying and able to carry on the work). It is about building relationships, so getting stuck into one area is good. If people never go on another trip they are changed for life and often they become ardent prayer warriors and sometimes amazing fundraisers."

A school is built

It was in 1999, after several years of writing to my penfriend, Alpha, and having helped him to get established in life, I was asked to aid him and his community at Looking Town, on the edge of Freetown the capital.  The area had been devastated in the rebel attack on Freetown of the 6th January, 1999. Thousands of people were killed and homes burnt to the ground. Women and girls had been raped. Children and young people had been conscripted as fighters in the rebel cause. Hundreds of people had limbs amputated.  On the 23rd March,  a group of Christians in the community decided to start a programme for both the residents and the many people who had fled to the area as a result of the civil war and had been caught up in the attack.  The children, some of whom had lost parents in the fighting, were roaming around with no hope, future or direction. The Chief and elders in the community believed that education was the answer. With the help of friends in Community Church Derby we were able to buy a plot of land and to start erecting a school.

Building started on this site with a commanding view over Kissy and across the estuary. At first the school for primary age children was housed in very unstable buildings, but gradually the new school took shape. The children helped in the building work and the great day arrived when everything was ready and the children could carry their desks and chairs to the new accommodation.

Moving day to the new school

What a fine building they have erected. It now houses two schools. The New Era Primary School meets there in the morning and the Junior Secondary School in the afternoon. Alpha Kargbo has done a good job as the Education and Development co-ordinator.  The number of pupils in the Primary School is now 409.  The Secondary School started in September 2008 with 50 pupils and has now nearly doubled in size. Foundations are in place for a second classroom block which urgently needs funds for early completion. Our funding comes mainly from those who sponsor children, as well as events and gifts from a number of Trusts. We are very grateful to all our supporters. If you would like further information or wish to support the work, please contact the UK Co-ordinator, Ted Swindale on tswindaleuk@yahoo.co.uk

The first classroom block, currently home to both schools

A Class in the new Secondary School

Some of the youngest starting their life's journey!

The foundations of our second classroom block taken from the steps of the first.

The building will have an office/library as well as classrooms for the Junior Secondary School. It will also be used for vocational studies such as soap making, gara tie-dying, tailoring, catering and carpentry. Currently much of this has been done in the open-air, but this is not possible in the lengthy rainy season.