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Christmas Letter

5 December 2025

Hello Everyone

Just a quick message with an update and to wish you a Happy Christmas!

We have an exciting bit of news.  Simon and team (from Business Moves Group - a company that has supported us for a long time) is in Freetown at the weekend and planning the most amazing treat.

Think of the children on the 7th December… THE CHILDREN (45 in all) and ALL THE STAFF (17 staff)  are being taken out for a Christmas dinner and play adventure at the SKY BAR.  It’s a play centre and restaurant in Freetown. They have even arranged for Santa to make a flying visit too.  These children are not going to forget this day ever (and their school friends won’t hear the end of it for weeks)!  

Check out this YouTube video on what the children will experience!

So a huge thank you to Simon and his team, and we hope everyone has a great time.

I mentioned ‘Staffi’ (Mustafa) in the last catch up.  Well he is actually leaving us in a week, to a new life as a trainee potter.  He actually could have gone a couple of weeks ago but we held him back so we could let him join in the treat at Sky Bar which we also plan to be a farewell party for him.

Christmas donation?

Do any of you have someone on your Christmas list that has everything?

Would you like to make a donation on their behalf for something life changing?  

We are gradually revamping everything at the home, just to get it all up to date, and ready for the next 20 years.  I recently spotted these ex-military bunkbeds for sale. We thought they would be a great upgrade on the beds that we have at the moment (which are looking a bit tired now).  Also these will be a lot more hygienic.

We want to purchase 40 bunk beds at £125 each (mattress not included). Any contribution would be extremely welcome.

If you do want to contribute, could you do a bank transfer and just reference it BEDS and your name please (so we know if we can gift aid it)?

We have been discussing how we can make the bedrooms a lot brighter and better ventilated for the children so considering putting extra and larger windows in, but these things all take time and money to get done – but that’s the plan.

Also in the plan (for 2026) – we really want to make a big effort to have something else in place.  Just to make sure that every school age child that passes through leaves us with proper reading and writing skills and basic mathematics.  

We want to make it a VERY specific objective that has to be achieved.  

I am sure that everyone would agree that these are skills that really make a lasting difference to life and we think it’s something we should really try hard on.  Also we hope to create a computer skills programme as well in the future.

A very brief message for once!

Christmas will be on us in a flash, so I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and great 2026.

Thanks for all your support as always

Very best wishes

Philip

Autumn update

29 September 2025

Hello Everyone,

It’s been a while since I did a catch up on news so this is what has been going on so far in 2025.

Some quick feedback on a previous event, we held the coffee morning event on May 17th and thank you to all those who attended and to others who also gave generously.  We raised an impressive £2,609 (including Gift Aid).  Thank you so much for your generosity.

I have also previously informed you, a lovely donated Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle arrived in February and I flew to Freetown to help formally accept it from Stephen and Jan.  It arrived in perfect condition and has since done an excellent job ferrying our teams and children around.  Stephen and some friends that travelled down with him were 'blown away' with what we have achieved at St George and delighted that we had become the beneficiaries of their gift.

At the same time we had a very generous donation from a company that has family links to one of Stephen’s friends that accompanied him - Gompels Healthcare.  

They support many children’s projects in the UK and Africa as well as being very environmentally conscious with their own business activities.  

I had the opportunity to explain to them that although St George Foundation is stable and doing a good job, we seem to have got stuck running at below capacity because of funding.  We really want to run with another 25 children in at any one time (that’s not the full maximum capacity but it is an ideal number to work with).

In response they very generously offered to top up the funds that we already raise.  For the next four years they will add enough to cover half those extra spaces permanently.   Twelve or thirteen places however mean that a lot more than an extra 12 or 13 children can get helped.  Because the children often stay for quite short periods and we reuse the places, it means that maybe 50 children over the course of each year may now be given a place.

That is really a fantastic bit of news and I am extremely glad and grateful that we are to become the beneficiaries of their support.  I am putting a link here to their website if you want to see what they do.

Mpox

We had one bit of alarm a few months ago, but I am pleased to say the situation seems to be under control now and the moment passed: We had an outbreak of the Mpox virus in Freetown that had the potential to seriously hurt the children.  When it hit Freetown there was no treatment facility, drugs or inoculation available. But I am pleased to say there is now a dedicated treatment centre open and the infection rate has subsided.  Mpox is potentially fatal and the younger the victim the more likely a poor outlook, so we decided to close the centre to all new admissions and keep the children at home while we reviewed the situation.  Plus, for a while only a handful of staff would come into work and we also briefly stopped the children attending school but that has been reversed.  Thankfully things did not get out of control and life has now largely returned to normal.

People news

Let us start with a very positive bit.   Mustafa or ‘Staffi’ is a boy that has spent most of his life with us as no rehoming was ever possible.  Staffi is a polio victim and unable to use his legs and spent the entire time in a wheelchair.  He is now about 18 years old (although he looks younger) but we have been concerned about how to work with him long term.  We tried to get him onto a course some time ago but as he was quite disabled we were not able to at the time.  We were advised that he had to become independent to the point that he could dress himself and manage bathroom facilities without assistance.  He also needed to develop his hand coordination.  So for the past year he has been learning to manage these skills on his own plus has trained as a drummer in order to improve his hand coordination.  Last week we were delighted that he has been accepted onto a course where he will learn pottery skills and learn to make widely used local pottery cooking pots.  It’s a one year course but at the end he should be able to make a living for himself.  Thankfully we have also had a guest who has visited St George offer to support him through this process. Taking the children for days at the beach have always been marked by Staffi’s almost suicidal frolicking in the waves where we spend ages with one eye on him making sure he doesn’t get washed away!
 
We will miss him.
 

Also, while we are talking about individuals, we have two major team members moving on:

  • In Sierra Leone, Aruna has been offered a really great government job and with a heavy heart he announced that he will be taking it. Justina has enjoyed the constant support of Aruna as one of her key managers.  He has worked tirelessly for over eleven years with great enthusiasm, dedication, intelligence and always with a smile on his face.  He has been a great ambassador for St George dealing with government ministries and partner organisations.  The children have really benefitted from having him around and really love him, so we will all miss him. On the plus side – we will now have someone on the inside of government on our side.
  • In the UK, Richard Green-Wilkinson has announced that he wishes to retire as a trustee and also as our accountant next year. Richard has been with us since the very start of the journey and we know each other from church and living in the same village.  I think he may have been the first person that I actually asked to formally do anything, but I asked because I knew he was a steady pair of hands to look after the financial side of the charity.  We are extremely grateful for all the work he has done over the years and of course we will soon be looking for a new trustee (or two) and someone to do the accounts hopefully for the next phase of St George.

Other bits of news

On another financial note, but not a positive.  Our bank account has been repeatedly targeted by scammers and over the past year, 18 fraudulent direct debits have been set up plus three cheques attempted to be cashed. Barclays Bank have done nothing to stop it.  They have refused to provide a blanket ban on direct debits on our account as it is not their policy, so scammers have been able to go online and set up Direct Debits using our bank account information and signing with  e signatures.  Every day now we transfer any money in our normal account to another one so that any DD payments bounce.  It is costing Barclays the lost money as they have to keep refunding us for the stolen money, which so far that has been over £15,000.

We are still trying to find solutions and also have complained to the Financial Ombudsman and the Financial Conduct Authority. The Winchester MP has written to the Minister, but she has just responded that we are not out of pocket, because we can be refunded by Barclays. So we have been in touch with the Charity Commission to find out how many other charities are having this problem (The Charity Commission warned about this 15 years ago). We are also in touch with an influential member of the House of Lords who may be able to put more pressure on the Minister to bring in legislation. Still last week another Direct Debit was set up – almost unbelievable!

While I am on the not good stuff.  Bed Bugs!  We had an infestation a few months ago. We had the entire place fumigated and for a while it was perfect.  Last week they were back again so we are doing fumigation again, plus the same firm will now fumigate the homes of all the staff.  Not only is it unpleasant for the children but also a health risk so we have to deal with it quickly and have already given the go ahead to call the pest control people in.  I think the bed bugs are back for revenge as loads more this time – but the children are fighting back.  All those brown smudges on the walls are squashed bed bugs, so we will have to re paint the rooms too once fumigated.

New licencing and fencing required – the local government has introduced a new licencing policy for homes such as ours and they also have carried out inspections to check homes are up to the standard.  They informed us that we passed everything except that our fencing was inadequate and gave us a month to put new fencing up according to their requirements (to stop children leaving).  Of course no money was offered to cover this expense and I am not happy to use fencing in this way. It has been something that has been raised many times in the past and we have always resisted.

However they are now forcing us to do this so we will be putting up the minimum fencing that will keep the authorities satisfied, but I am positive that any child that wants to run away will simply climb over it or disappear on the way to school or wander off when the gate is open.  

However, to end with let me tell you something great.  These surprise things (like fumigation and fencing) are expensive and fairly recently we realised we were over spending.  We came to the conclusion to put things back on track we would temporarily have to reduce the number of children living in the centre.  So we informed the team in Freetown to prepare a reduction in children for a while.  For several weeks we had been telling them that this was inevitable and once we had actually done it we told them – we have now crunched the numbers and next Monday we will give you the new figure for how many children to have.   For the Christians among us we had a wonderful ‘Oh Praise the Lord moment’ and for the non-Christians we had a ‘very lucky coincidence’. Literally on that weekend, before we gave the new numbers to reduce the children – we received a very generous donation from one of our supporters……and we didn’t have to reduce the number at all!

Thank you so much to that supporter with a great sense of timing and for their generosity!

And that’s it for now.   Thank you always so much for your continued support.

Very best wishes

Philip

Start of 2025 update from Freetown

15 May 2025

We have had a very good start to 2025. With new team members joining us in Freetown, a substantial commercial donor coming on board (enabling us to help around 50 more children a year).

The new office extension with a second storey is nearing completion and we are making good progress with the final securing of the site and boundary of the home. And of course doing a great job looking after children!

Vehicle donation

A lovely donated vehicle arrived in February and I flew down to Freetown to formally accept the donation of a Toyota Land Cruiser from a very generous couple - Stephen and Jan.

In August 2024 Stephen contacted me about finding a vehicle that could drive all the way to West Africa and when there the plan was to donate it to a local charity.  The idea was that I would find a suitable vehicle and a charity to donate to.  At some point it became the objective that the vehicle would be donated to St George Foundation.  It's a huge bonus for us, as it would have taken a major effort to fundraise the amount required and at the same time almost all our own vehicles were reaching the end of their useful lives.
 
I found the vehicle in the UK as a left hand drive import with very low miles on the clock and we did a huge amount of upgrading so the vehicle was fully prepared for an expedition.  Stephen and his friend John picked it up in December and then early January headed off to Freetown with 2 other friends in a Land Rover (see the photos).  Jan flew out in February directly to Freetown and joined him for the last week of the trip and the bit that involved St George Foundation.
 
Stephen and friends were 'blown away' with what we have achieved and delighted that we became the beneficiaries of their gift.
 
Thank you so much to them for this donation!
 
Philip

Coffee morning

17 April 2025

Coffee Morning, Exhibition, Update and Gift Day – Saturday 17th May

We will be holding a coffee morning, with an exhibition and update from Philip at the Paterson Centre, Swanmore on Saturday 17th May from 10.00 to 12.00 noon so, if you are local, do come along.
(Paterson Centre is attached to St Barnabas Church, Church Rd, Swanmore, SO32 2PA)

This will also be a gift day. Our finances are stretched, because high inflation in Sierra Leone has meant that our normal expenditure exceeds our monthly income by about £1,200 a month. We are encouraging new supporters to sign standing orders, and, if you are able to increase your standing order that would be extremely helpful. If not, a donation would be most welcome.

We hope to see you on 17th May.

AGM 2025

20 January 2025

Quick note to say that the AGM is on 25th Jan at 10am on Zoom.

If you’d like the invite to attend, please contact us for the link.

Saturday 25th January 2025, 10.00 – 11.30am

Agenda

Introduction
Dave Hedges, Trustee

Finances – Accounts to 31.3.24 & to date
Richard Green-Wilkinson, Trustee & Treasurer

SL Centre Update
Philip Dean, Founder

Children & Staff at the Centre
Video update

Trustee Thoughts
Patrick John, Trustee

Conclusion
Philip Dean, Founder

Looking forward to seeing you then.

Christmas letter 2025

15 December 2024

Hello All
 
Well Christmas is upon us and another year of amazing work by our team in
Sierra Leone. All that work totally reliant on good will from you – our equally
amazing supporters.
 
Can I start with some quick fire points before that chatty letter bit that you
may or may not manage to read through.
 
So – Firstly and straight to the point. Can anyone assist with £400 or part of to
cover the cost of parties for the children in the next few weeks?
 
Secondly - Justina and Aruna (two key members of our Sierra Leone team)
both hope to visit the UK in the spring. Can anyone invite them to a talk to
your local community about our work while they are here?
 
Thirdly – Our AGM is approaching and will be online again. It is Saturday,
January 25 th at 10am. If you would like to join us online can you please email
back to request a link invitation?
 
Fourth – sorry its money.
We have completed the upstairs of our offices now and looking for some funds
to furbish the new rooms. £1,300 required?
We have also committed to buying a small section of land immediately
between our boundary and a new access road that is being built behind us.
We don’t want to find a new neighbour building right on our boundary so we
 
have already paid part but still require £5,200 to complete over the next few
months.
 
Fifth point - is to say a huge thank you to Stephen who has purchased and is
donating to us in January a used Toyota Prado 4x4. It’s a huge expense that we
would have had to come looking for in the near future so we are greatly
relieved to have one donated in a single act. Stephen and some friends are
actually driving it to Sierra Leone and then flying back. It’s been upgraded to
handle really difficult conditions and should last us very well for several years
to come (and he very kindly let me choose the car myself, so it is exactly what
we wanted).
 
And now …………..the actual letter to see out 2024.
 
Well this year and in the last few years we have expanded to have about 300
children stay at St George home in any one year period (and over 2000 have
actually lived in with us over the 20 years we have existed). But we never have
300 children there at a time. So what has changed? Well, we have actually -
to match the nature of the demand, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is
that ALL the children in our care were either homeless, or had nowhere to go
when they came to us.
 
So who are the children? Well we still have a core of street children who do
come and stay for quite a while much as we have always done. But in addition
we do have a lot of short term children coming through and leaving again quite
quickly. These can be abandoned children and babies who are found in the
streets and brought in by the Police or social services normally – we look after
them while longer term arrangements can be made. Others may be children
who have been abused and run away or been rescued from an abusive
situation for their own safety or child rape victims. Sadly, quite a few of them
and they all need care and somewhere safe – we arrange appropriate medical
 
support and counselling, and when we are sure we arrange reunification with
their families - plus we do assist with prosecutions. But how we transform
these frightened children is amazing. On my last trip a teenage girl was
brought in (I don’t actually know why) and clearly looked traumatised and
tense…..the next day when I saw her again, she had fresh clothes, was relaxed
and playing with the other children as if she had been there forever.
Another category of children I never really expected are victims of slavery and
trafficking. In 2023 we actually rescued 25 children from traffickers (20 were
Sierra Leonean and the other 5 were from Liberia or Guinea). But for all these
children St George Foundation offered a safe and caring place for them to stay
until they could safely move on with their lives.
(That is still happening today and at the end of this letter I am adding two
stories of actual cases that are live right now just to give you a flavour of what
happens when we get trafficked children in).
 
And of course, all of this happens with the money you donate and we still
manage to take less than 1% for administration in the UK. That does come
with a catch in that all of us in the UK are volunteering our time and have
regular jobs elsewhere. St George IS our spare time and the real reason you
can go for long periods without these catch up letters.
 
We also continue to do ‘community’ work and have always done so. The
number of children worked with in the community tends to be bigger and it is
not normally paid for out of our own funds, but we will be working with
partners. It still happens under our name and carried out by our team and it
wouldn’t happen if St George didn’t exist. The number of children worked with
in this way has now passed 5,000. It tends to be supporting children who are
spending their days in the streets and may be working and not attending
school, but these ones do go home at night. The support mainly is in
education (sometimes in street school classes), and intervening with the
families and communities to encourage them to get their children in to school.
 
We would never expect these children to have to come and live with us at the
home – it is just working in the streets.
 
And now for the surprise. There are little St George Foundations popping up
elsewhere now – not just Sierra Leone. They are not actually us, but we have
mentored and encouraged small groups who have a passion and have seen and
experienced our work and we have encouraged them to copy our model and to
find their own funding. So a small team is now established and supporting war
victims and child combatants in Goma in Congo - just in the streets (no home
at this point). And ex-employees have just set up street projects in Liberia and
Guinea. In Guinea it is mainly child protection work, in Liberia it is that but also
having to deal with environmental issues which are causing problems within
communities.
 
I often think now of St George Foundation as a child protection organisation
rather than a children’s home and I am somewhat surprised to find ourselves
dealing with victims of modern day slavery.
 
But we do now regulalrly come across children who have been sold and
trafficked across borders to work as slaves.
 
I am going to tell you 2 stories of girls who have just been rescued in the last
few weeks, so these are real cases and happening right now. The two girls are
both about 12 years old. They will both live with us at St George for a while,
but eventually both will be returned to their real families once we are sure it is
safe.
 
The first story is about a girl who only arrived with St George Foundation last
Friday.
 
We do not know anything about her mother at this stage, but we do know that
her father went with people traffickers to get himself smuggled into Europe.
He is now living as an illegal immigrant in Spain. He had a girlfriend in Sierra
Leone and he left his daughter with her to be looked after. But the girlfriend
turned out to be some sort of wicked stepmother.
 
Last week a man turned up at their house in a van and the girl was told that
she had to get in the van and go with the man. She had never seen him
before. When she got in she discovered that she was one of 8 children in the
van. It appears they were then being trafficked into Guinea – that’s the next
door country to Sierra Leone and a much wealthier. Many Sierra Leonean
children live and work there as slaves and are seriously abused. But they don’t
run away, because they are told that if they run away and get caught – they
will be killed.
 
On the way to Guinee the van stopped and the children saw a chance to
escape. Three of the 8 children managed to jump out of the vehicle and run
for their lives to escape. This girl was eventually stopped by a woman who
wanted to know what was going on. When she heard, the woman took the girl
immediately to the Police and told them what had happened. The Police
brought her to St George Foundation last Friday where she is now safe and the
staff will find out where she is from and then visit her family and make sure
everything will be OK before she is returned. We will also be ready to work
with the Police to bring the people who caused this to justice.
 
The next story is about another girl about the same age. Her mother was
tricked into going to job in Kuwait. But the job was not true and she then got
into trouble and taken to prison in Kuwait. This is very common and wealthy
people in countries like Kuwait will use people from poor countries as servants
but not pay them and treat them very badly – it IS a form of slavery. But if
they run away they get arrested. This girl’s mother had made arrangements
for her daughter to stay with her friend in Sierra Leone while she sent money
 
home, but as no money came they did not wait and they headed off towards
Europe. It is actually her mother who was tricked and became a slave and it is
not clear at this stage what was happening to the girl – but it wasn’t good.
 
On the way the girl got seriously sick and the mother’s friend abandoned her.
She ended up in Hospital in Tunisia and is still there. The International
Organisation for Migration have contacted St George Foundation and arranged
that when she is well enough she will be sent back to Sierra Leone and handed
over to us. From there the staff will trace her family and work out how to re
unite her with here real relatives once we are sure she will be safe. At this
stage we don’t know why she was in Tunisia, but highly likely she was being
trafficked.
 
St George Foundation has been increasing efforts on anti-trafficking and anti-
slavery among vulnerable children. We have managed to help prosecute
suspected traffickers and actively working with the Government to tighten up
the Anti-Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Act of 2022.
 
So why do people end up as slaves in 2024? The answer comes down to
poverty and greed.
 
Some families are so poor that they cannot feed themselves. They are then
tempted to send one of their children to relatives or other people they know
who promise to look after them. But actually they get used as slaves. St
George Foundation is working with the government of Sierra Leone to make it
illegal to send your children away to live with other people (who abuse them).
I have personally met with government ministers who are supporting us in this
work.
 
Another way children become slaves is that people sell them to traffickers or
fake adoptions. The price is typically around £60 to buy a child, but once the
child has been adopted or trafficked they are rarely seen again.
 
St George Foundation do not do this work on our own but as part of the Child
Welfare Committee. But we are the only ones that take care of the child
victims and give them a caring home while they are being helped.
We also work with Social services and the Police and court system to prosecute
offenders, as well as UNICEF which is very involved and oversee a lot of the
work.
 
I just thought it would be interesting for you to see actual example cases that
are live today. This is the sort of thing that is happening all the time and
happening because you give us such reliable support.
 
THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!
And may you all have a lovely Christmas and a great 2025.
 
Philip
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