Dear Supporters

As always – thank you to all of you that keep on supporting the work for children in Sierra Leone. Once again our latest accounts show our UK costs very low and at less than 1% (the average charity spread measured in 2019 was between 13% and 73%).

As you may be aware, we have been working with children’s charity, Toybox for a few years (directly supporting education for children in the streets), and they have been very supportive of our work and are currently carrying out an audit of our finances and systems.

Our AGM was held on line again this year and thank you to all who attended. We realise that Saturday morning is not a free time for many people, so for those that didn’t make it below is a brief summary. We were joined online by Justina in Freetown, and heard from some of the children again, which was great (links below of what some of them they had to say).

• https://youtu.be/So9aTb-loa4
• https://youtu.be/3oKRHtSFal0
• https://youtu.be/EvJHFlGGwV0

Finances

The 2022 accounts are on the website here… but the highlights are:

• Income up at £102k – thanks to our most generous supporters.
• Centre and land purchase at $70k plus tax and legal fees. Exchange rate $1.36 to £1
• UK expenses less than 1% of our income
• Some money loaned to us and being repaid over 5 years
• £40k of funds, with £13k of this in restricted funds, being sponsored education £5,918, ‘next door land’ £5,090 and Duke medical (see more below) £2,531.

With a much-improved exchange rate, we plan to increase the number of children rescued and brought to the Centre to 50 (from 40 this year).We would like to keep increasing the children at the Centre, if we can afford it.

Financial Needs

The offices at the Centre have been completed this year see pictures here.

We need now to build the visitor accommodation (approx. £2,500) – very important for guests to be able to stay.

We need to put in our own drive, past the well (£800).

We also need to secure the premises with fencing and importantly, cameras, lights, alarms and good signage (£3,000).

As an environmentally friendly way of securing our property boundaries we are planting a mixed hedge as opposed to building a wall or permanent fencing. We really do have to secure the boundary. There is a huge amount of pressure for access to land for housing as the entire area around us transforms from rural tranquillity to suburban town. The valley used to be full of virgin rainforest, but its almost all gone over the past few years- It is quite likely we will have the only trees left in the valley on our property soon and if you look at the photos of the new office buildings, we did not remove the trees but worked around them.

Charitable Objects

On that point about being environmentally aware, we would like to promote the environment in Sierra Leone. We plan to educate the children of Sierra Leone about the environment to help the next generation understand their environment and the coming climate change. The local situation is awful with minimal understanding on the main issues with beaches clogged with plastic waste, a devastating crash in fish populations and uncontrolled waste disposal as well as exhaust fumes that are choking. It will be quite a project and we will be approaching organisations to fund it.

In order to do this, we need to change our charitable objects, so we propose changing to the attached, widening paragraph 1 and adding paragraph 2 (proposed changes in red). However, we would like to assure you that all our usual (and unrestricted) income will only be applied to our core activity of rescuing street children in Sierra Leone. Environmental matters or anything else will be the subject of special fund raises with income treated as restricted to the purpose of the fund raise.

If you have any concerns about the change, please let us know.

The Rescued Children

We had a catch up about past children, with whom we are still in touch and encouraging them. We mentioned that we currently know of 11 at university,3 having become church ministers, and others that we are aware of now living and working in Dubai, USA and Liberia.

We shared some films of children telling us what they are now up to since leaving (shared in the links above).

On Duke there is an update, and he is currently well, living an almost normal life, but frustratingly, still not had his major surgery, and still waiting for this. On the very positive side, and much thanks to a nurse at the hospital he attends, coming forward with information, we have now traced and reunited him with his family. They had felt they had no choice but to abandon him when their money ran out. We are remaining in close contact and continue to cover his medical expenses and oversee his care.

Ona very sad note, we informed the meeting of the sudden death of Abdul Sesay another past boy (through illness). At just 19 years old he had been studying at bible college and was a hard-working sensible young man.

As always, (over the past 19 years) we continue to rescue street children and care for them at the Centre, and we will have to think about marking next year when we will achieved 20 years of this work!

Many thanks for your continued support as always, and very best wishes for 2023.

Philip and the Trustees

At our recent AGM we were able to share photos of our new office building. This has been built on our new land allowing us to move our office onto the same site as the children's home.