Current Help in Sierra Leone

Throughout these four weeks of research about various social, political and economic aspects in Sierra Leone, one of the major questions that I’ve had was, what are some of the things that people are currently doing to help the country? I’ve spent four weeks learning about the numerous problems and conflicts in Sierra Leone, however I haven’t learned much about what is currently being done now to aide Sierra Leone in its efforts to improve the current state.

While in my search for answers I came upon an organization, or rather a ‘mission’ called Mission Bo. Mission Bo is a project that hopes to create a ‘self sustaining’ community in the region of Sierra Leone known as Bo. Within 15 years Mission Bo plans to aid the region with resources that could provide them with more access to safe drinking water, food, daily habits improvements and an education for the children. Mission Bo was created in association with the organizations Big Stones and World Vision. World Visions has been involved with improving Sierra Leone since 1978 and “Since 1998, World Vision has implemented numerous water and sanitation projects.” As I said in a previous post, many wells were destroyed during the civil war in Sierra Leone but World Vision has applied its workers in to improving and creating over 150 wells. The Bo district specifically, is one of the most populated areas in Sierra Leone and is one of the foremost areas that are in dire need for better water access. World Vision’s Plan and Water Project of 2007 proclaims that the diarrheal diseases are the second highest causes for death within the area. These diseases are caused by the horrible water conditions. Some of the many other facts that I discovered were that:

• The ideal ratio of people to wells is 250 to 1. Currently the ratio in the Mission Bo area is 2,500 to 1.
• 1 out of 3 kids die before the age of 5 due to a water-related disease or poor sanitation.
• Contaminated water and poor sanitation are factors in 80% of all illness in the developing world.

Although I don’t find many of these statistics as shocking as I originally did I do realize that they are still staggering nonetheless in today’s world standards.
I am definitely glad that there are organizations and missions like these that exist in order to help , however I realize that it could never quite be enough. Today, people from “Invisible Children” came to my school. Invisible Children was originally a documentary that opened the world’s eyes to the child soldiers of northern Uganda and it is now an organization that devotes itself to aiding the country’s education system. Schools all over the United States fundraised thousands of dollars (over a million actually) to fund schools in Uganda. That money they raised provided a lot of help towards the schools and a few select students got to see how their contributions helped the Ugandan community. After watching and learning about this I’ve come to realize that although creating documentaries, or raising just enough money for one students to have an education does make a difference. Regardless of the size of an act it is still taking action. I no longer look at Africa Waterways to Peace as just a project for school. The different things we are doing within the project, the documentaries and desalination prototypes, are all steps that we are taking in order to help.

Above: A mother coming from a local river carrying water to use to cook and feed her children.

Links:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEeMzQHsqSo (video about Mission Bo)
• http://www.missionbo.org/getinvolved.html
• http://www.missionbo.org/docs/WaterProject2-2007.pdf (documents the Mission Bo plans)