At Grafton we have started work on a new girls block. When we started (back in 2004) there were always about two boys to every girl needing help, so the accommodation was designed around that. Twenty years later that is hopelessly wrong and the girl’s accommodation is very overcrowded. We are preparing a new bedroom block that will double the space available for girls. So far the foundations are done and we hope to get a grant to do most of the work.

Grace and her expat ladies (in the UK) that did up the dining room had clearly done an amazing job and are now preparing the next project to upgrade the current girl’s rooms. Those are also in need of a makeover, so they are planning to put large windows into each of the three rooms just to make them brighter. On top of that a local family has very kindly offered to replace all the ceilings in the bedrooms as the ceiling panels are falling apart with age and need replacing. So in addition and before that we are just about to replace all the corrugated metal roof sheets as they are now 20 years old and starting to decay and leak and we plan to fix that issue before replacing the ceilings. Fairly soon the girls rooms will be much nicer!

We visited Staffi at his new home where he seemed very happy and accepted by his co-workers. He was the boy who has spent almost his entire life with St George and now approaching 18 he was accepted to train to make local cooking stoves out of recycled metal with clay liners. It was good to see him coping well.

We are about to have an adoption for a toddler to a Sierra Leonean American couple. The baby was orphaned soon after birth due to her mother’s Kush drug addiction and with a father unknown and no family to contact; she didn’t have a great outlook. The opportunity came up with local social services to suggest to a couple already seeking a child for adoption that they may want to consider this little girl. It is not a practice we really like to get involved in but for this particular child it is probably the best option she will ever get for a normal life and a real bond formed very quickly for the adoptive parents.

While showing the team around Freetown we passed the very first house that I rented as a children’s home (2004- 2007). I couldn’t resist knocking on the door and we got shown around by a charming chap that now had the place as a business office. It had hardly changed at all and it was a trip down memory lane to visit the place. That’s the building we had 68 children plus 15 volunteers living when we first took them off the streets.

To update you on a point raised in the last letter. St George have been campaigning for children in a more political way to protect them from abuse, trafficking and informal slavery. To recap, we have created a group with similar organisations (in Sierra Leone) to work together on this and approached local government ministers. In March, our Sierra Leone team were invited and have now done a presentation to the ECOWAS parliament. ECOWAS is the equivalent of the EU with 15 West African countries as members. The address was very well received and questions asked and most importantly the points we wished to raise have been done and everything we said was well accepted. It’s a step in the right direction and not a job done, but we were happy to get that opportunity and clear support.

And this is very random, but worth pointing out. I became aware of something recently, and that is that we look after these children for an absolutely amazing price. I compared our costs with the average cost of keeping a child in care in the UK (which starts at around £100,000 per child per year). We are doing the same job for 2% of that (or around £2,000 a year per child ….or 98% less). I match that figure with our incredibly small spend on administration and fund raising as a charity, which remains about 1% to 2% of the money we receive (a tenth of the UK charity average who also spend another 5% to 10% on actual fund raising costs). We really achieve this because everyone in the UK is a volunteer (even I have a full time job elsewhere), we don’t have an office and we avoid fund raising strategies that swallow too much in expenses.

Finally - I want to say a special thank you for all the financial support that we have received in the past year and those that give on a regular basis. But some has come in completely anonymously and even from overseas. We haven’t been able to say thank you always and so I would like to take this opportunity to say an enormous thank you for all the regular donations and the unexpected ones that we have received. Some of these donations have been amazing and we haven’t always been able to respond directly, so really a huge thank you!

Many thanks as always and best wishes

Philip