About Us

Who are we?

St George Foundation is a charity in England and a Local Non-Government Organisation (NGO) in Sierra Leone, working in partnership since 2004.

In England, we are a small team of volunteers with no paid staff and no physical office. This enables 98% of everything we raise to go directly to the work in Sierra Leone.

In Sierra Leone, we are a Local NGO and work closely with The Sierra Leonean Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA).  We belong to the Child Protection Committee and also Family Tracing & Reunification (FTR) Group.

We are the leading child welfare provider in an area known as Western Rural with a population of approximately 250,000 people.  This is the rural area immediately on the outskirts of Freetown and covers the Freetown Peninsula (excluding the urban area itself).

What do we normally do?

Our primary work involves supporting homeless children or street children.

But this often includes abandoned infants, referrals from social services and children whose families are unable to cope for whatever reason. Our emphasis is on ending their time being homeless and helping them to deal with their problems. Once the process has begun and they are settled, we help them on their journey to reunify them to a settled home with their relatives and ensure they are enrolled in a school for their continued education. This is facilitated via our residential home at Grafton.

On average the children live with us in the home for one academic year during which time we assist them to rehabilitate, adjust to schooling and work with their families to ensure a successful return.

Read more about our work >

Partners

Working with Toybox

Toybox are a much larger and well established charity who have working with street children in South America for many years. Their overriding aim is to help children marginalised and abused by those who should protect them. They work with other children's charities in different countries, and chose to work with St George Foundation in Sierra Leone.

Toybox website: toybox.org.uk. Read latest SGF Toybox update.

Video clips

Children's stories

This short clip with the children really captures what we are about.

These stories are typical of the children in our care and our approach in supporting them is clear.

Note: The film was made several years ago by the Hull Freedom Trail. Numbers quoted are now out of date: in 2011 the number of children we had assisted surpassed 1000!

Ebola response

This clip of St George Foundation was filmed and broadcast by BBC News in January 2015.

Used with permission

This clip of St George Foundation was filmed and broadcast by Sky News in December 2014.

More media coverage is featured on our Ebola response page.