Sierra Leone News posts

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

We had a very busy trip to Sierra Leone a month ago – a fact-finding trip with the team preparing to open our new skills training college. It is important to note that any funds received for the training college are given specifically for this purpose and are held as restricted funds. They are used solely to support the development and operation of the college and are entirely separate from donations made for the children.

On the trip were myself (Philip Dean), James Sandfield, Rob Hurley and John Booth.  James, Rob and John were first timers to Sierra Leone and James and Rob have since become new trustees on the strength of the trip.  It’s not all hard work and after a hot days work at approaching 40 degrees it’s really nice to chill out once in a while.  Here are John and James enjoying a beer in the evening coolness at a bar in town.

The children were great as always and the atmosphere happy and relaxed with the staff doing a super job as usual, and we took everyone for a day at the beach on the weekend.  On the last day as we said our farewells I asked the children if they thought living at St George Foundation was a happy thing?  To answer YES they should make a lot of noise and if NO to make no noise – the response almost caused burst eardrums!  So I came away feeling very happy as usual.

One of the villages has agreed to pilot a fish farm to study the results.  We also plan to put fish tanks in at St George Foundation itself and at the college site as well as James’ Sandfield’s back garden (in the UK), so we really hope to get some experience of the reality before we start teaching.  Catfish looks like being the best option to start with as they are a local fish in Sierra Leone, already eaten, easily farmed and Justina hopes to be cooking Louisiana catfish stew to the children by 2027.

While visiting the villages we were in a very rural area and I have to say it was sad to see slash and burn land clearance is thriving.  At times we could hardly breathe and in these photos you can see the point that we gave up on a trip to view another village.  We were concerned about fire drifting across the road and getting ourselves in trouble.

However on the same trip we were treated to a musical welcome that would have made anyone feel welcome and in the subsequent village meeting we witnessed our staff swap seamlessly and fluently into the local tribal language.

Plus being treated to THE MOST delicious fresh coconuts (James and Rob enjoying this treat - nothing like the ones we get here).

We also did a trip to a drugs den.  No photos of this as all the valuables were left in the car with the driver and we had to get escorted in by the locals.  We visited a market place where the locals can no longer ply their trades as the addicts have completely taken over and most of the market tables were each covered with 2 unconscious people and below the tables more unconscious people.  They are using a drug called Kush that is extremely potent and almost always fatal in the end.  It has caused huge health issues and security issues with the associated crime.  We are working there on a project with our partners Vibrant Villages to help the local population overcome some of the challenges caused by the drug dealers and their addicts.  

Hi All,

2026 has got off to a good start and we had a successful AGM a few weeks ago – thanks to those who attended in person and online.

I am going to mention here a subject that came up at the AGM which is in connection in this letter – that’s turns out to be particularly exciting as there is a huge advance now and some opportunities for getting personally involved as a result. I will also cover another subject that came up at the AGM which is where the children are nowadays and our efforts to fight modern day slavery (it seems crazy that I am even writing on such a subject in 2026). Plus a whole new enterprise introduced at the AGM also explained today.

MacDonald site

The next bit of news is a real surprise to most of you and it stems from our efforts a few years ago to buy the site at Grafton from the Scouts.

Before we purchased the land from the scouts that we now own it was a genuine concern that we could find ourselves having to leave at short notice with 50 or 60 children in tow. There is very little protection for tenants in Sierra Leone and it’s why we were so keen to secure the site. Grafton has always been ideal with a good plot and ideal location. Since we purchased it the surrounding area has become even more developed and to find a big plot now in that area would be very difficult – I think we got it just in time.

However, as we were not at all convinced we would succeed in buying it, Justina acquired a hill side plot of land 20 miles away and fantastic support from St George Church in Germany to build a new home. The replacement site was actually being prepared when we had the break through to purchase the site we really wanted at Grafton. It did cause us a dilemma, but the building work at the other site (in the village of MacDonald) was not completed and the buildings have stood unfinished for some time waiting while we figured out an alternative use. That use had to be genuinely beneficial and not a drain on the funds that we have for the children’s home at Grafton - and of course we were very concerned to honour the support from the German donors.

We tried to find partners that could occupy the site – but to no avail. We considered a medical clinic but the complexities and budget were huge. We considered a centre for seriously abused children – but we couldn’t get any interest to develop. And we considered further education, which is what we are going for. Many years ago I read that the GDP of South Korea and Sierra Leone was about the same in the 1950’s but the South Koreans were very focused on education – look at them now compared to Sierra Leone which has barely progressed! The average South Korean today has similar standard of living as the average Brit.

But, the big problem for nearly all our beneficiaries is that they come from very poor backgrounds. Just finishing school is an achievement (and we can intervene if dropping out looks likely). But going on to further education or university is rare although some have managed it and both Justina and I are independently and privately supporting individuals to do just that. It seems to cost me around £2,500 a year to train a civil engineer (a young lady that I personally took under my wing almost 20 years ago after we couldn’t locate any relatives).

I filmed this young man who arrived at St George as an ebola orphan at around ten years old. He had never attended school and had been raised breaking rocks with his parents, which is considered the lowest job possible. They both died of ebola, and subsequently Justina personally raised him and he has now made it to university and studying economics. Justina ended ebola with a host of these children in her own home and has been bringing them up herself ever since.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NBNKxgqOQkaVlE8va1MX4nrbg6yq9ffO/view

Personal intervention is a solution for a tiny handful, but how could we get more of our children to an advanced level?

Two years ago the team in Freetown embarked on an experiment and it is working, so this is now the solution we are planning for the site at MacDonald. They started a college to train teachers and charge the students a fee (they hire university lecturers to lecture in the evenings at a school building that is rented for the purpose). The whole project is funded by the fees paid and the college is affiliated and following the recognised course. There are currently 40 paying students in the middle of their second year. 

The concept is that St George can send a small number of our own children on to the course for free, with their cost covered by the students who are privately paying. It is therefore no drain on the funds that are raised for the children’s home. 

So I am very pleased to announce that the second site that was built at MacDonald by donors from Germany is to become a technical skills training college. Largely following the same funding formula it means it has to be self-sufficient with a mix of paying students and St George ones. I say largely following the same funding formula as we also plan to approach businesses with a direct interest to help fund related courses.

In the last few weeks we have recruited three great volunteers to manage the college from this end and a local finance manager (Adonis, who we have worked with for 20 years in Freetown). That’s the start of the team and they will work independently from the St George team and will find the college funding separately. In the UK I am pleased to introduce James who is a senior Nestle executive with plenty of charity experience overseas, Rob who has a degree in International development and John (retired) who was an RAF aircraft engineer, then plumber, electrician a qualified technical school teacher. All will be doing this in their free time and all three have different skills to offer. I will be travelling out in April/May with them to get the process started.

The courses are to be designed to create skilled individuals working in trades that have a long term future in Sierra Leone. We are looking to develop the courses in manageable stages, ultimately to train electricians, solar power and solar farm technicians, water well technicians, plumbers and pipe fitters, welders, carpenters and wood workers, air conditioning engineers, heavy equipment operators and Micro Fish Farming. These are all skills we think will offer well paid jobs and will be in demand long term. Nationally, in a developing economy they are also trades that the country itself desperately needs in a skilled labour force.

But there is some low lying fruit that we think can start easier than others and that’s basically due to funding and creating the courses. Those are to be domestic solar power installation and hopefully to be funded by the vast number of organisations offering solar power in Africa already. With their support we can train the technicians to fit the systems they want to supply.

And, Micro Fish Farming - We expect to be able to get our existing partners (Vibrant Villages) to accept that as a 2027 project for the rural training programme that we already run with them. It’s important this year that we raise as much money for the children’s home as possible as Vibrant Villages use a formula that shadows what we have raised ourselves for the children’s home to calculate their own budget. It’s very similar to match funding actually and allows us to do other work supporting the poor in rural communities that we would not otherwise be able to do. Fish farming could also be about to become critical. Most Sierra Leoneans consume most of their protein as fish and the Sierra Leone government is presently in the process of handing huge fishing rights to the Chinese government and presently constructing fish processing plants for the Chinese caught fish to be processed and exported. This will surely have a very detrimental effect on the local population’s access to fish and decimate the local fishing industry (it’s a very unpopular move among the population). So if we can teach people to farm fish on a micro level it could provide a very good income for the participating families and if scaled up could provide vital fish for the population.

Here are some pictures of the MacDonald site and as a bonus to encourage visiting lecturers it’s only a ten minute drive from the lovely beach that we take the children to at times.

There are three buildings like these which were to be dormitories but now class rooms.

You can just see the main road behind the far building (which is the front boundary, the side boundary is about 15 feet behind the buildings where there is an access track). The picture below shows the other side boundary which is the stream which is below the middle of the bridge. Taking this photos I was about 50 feet from the back boundary.

There are 5 buildings, set out in an L shape. Below you can see another dormitory/class room and a kitchen is the small building is just behind on the right.

A communal room which will become a lecture theatre sits in the middle.

James, Rob and John have quite a challenge ahead so we wish them good luck.

Internet connection

I mentioned this earlier. Internet connection has always been a problem and in the early days was just about impossible - even phoning was an issue. Still today, any connection is not stable and we have never been able to connect directly with the team in Freetown with any expectation that the line would stay open for any length of time. But with the development of the college we have been looking at the possibility of training being given over the internet by lecturers based elsewhere.

Well how could we achieve this? I was surprised and delighted to find that Starlink Satellite internet is now available in Sierra Leone and the running cost is quite reasonable with a lump sum to get the equipment at the start. But once in place it delivers the quality of connection we have all learned to see as normal here.

We have already given the go ahead to have a system installed at the children’s home in Grafton and we now have two schools (in the UK) keen to link up their pupils with our children and form reading buddy groups with the two lots of children reading to each other.

We also plan to encourage individuals here to give coaching online directly to children there to develop their reading and maths skills too. Hopefully we will test the theory and equipment over the coming months and then open up for individual volunteers to get involved directly to coach children on a one to one basis.

One final bit of good news for an individual child and who are our children nowadays?

Someone asked at the AGM who our children are nowadays (clearly not war orphans anymore). So this was the answer that I gave, but I did miss one point and so this is the bit I missed. St George Foundation is the only children’s home in the area where there is no qualification of the child required: we have an open door policy that will accept any child in danger or distress simply on the basis that they have nowhere else to go and need help (and in the case of many babies that means facing imminent death). Justina and I had a one to one conversation on this point a long time ago and we discussed - as Christians what responsibility we had and actually what would Jesus do if it was his decision? We decided he would allow any child in distress and in need to come in and so that’s how we came up with that as a policy (a little behind the scenes snippet on how we can sometime make decisions).

I have witnessed several children arrive and all seem anxious and not knowing anyone or what’s about to happen. The first thing that actually happens is that the staff take them to get washed up and a fresh set of clean clothes and a meal are provided. On that first day they don’t seem to want to mix with the other children and can even be quite aggressive when others approach them. By day two or three they are mixing and playing with the other children like they have been there for ever.

If you walked into the centre on any particular day about three quarters of the children would be long term residents that had nowhere else to go and most of those were actually living on the streets beforehand, often running away from an abusive situation and or modern day slavery or children escaping being trafficked. Trafficked children may well have ended up in neighbouring countries (there are reports of many Sierra Leonean children in Guinea). I inquired why they don’t all just run away, but they are threatened with death if they attempt to, so they often don't. Another long term group tends to be children (and especially girls in abusive situations) who were rescued for their own safety by the Police or having been reported to us via concerned individuals – they can take a while before they can be safely rehomed.

The remaining children would be short term who may well have been found by our own teams, brought to us by the authorities as simply being found in the streets alone, victims of flooding, fires, runaways, abandoned babies, and sudden breakdown of the family after a death. These cases tend to be simpler to deal with and the children re-united quite easily. Over the course of a year they are actually the biggest number of children, but they are literally with us for a few weeks.

Really, every child is unique but there are trends and here is a big one.

A lot of our children are homeless after escaping from a particular form of slavery and the violence and abuse that goes along with that. It's called locally the ‘manpikin business’ and it is not illegal. 

Manpikin business is a deeply rooted, traditional, and informal foster care system where children are raised by relatives or acquaintances other than their biological parents (often because the parents cannot support their children) and it often involves a money exchange. The going rate to buy a child is around £50.

Often in a rural setting a wealthy person will offer to look after a child on the promise to provide a good education and a good home. But the reality can be anything but that and the children are forced into labour in the home or streets and often suffer terrible abuse and sometimes never seen again. It mostly affects girls as they tend to be less troublesome and they will be able to do many domestic tasks already.

The worst abuse cases tend to be where there is no biological connection between the child and the adults concerned.

St George Foundation has been leading a response to this to have this practice made illegal. Working with the government and with direct support from serving government ministers, masses of law students from the university, the Police, social services and other NGOs in support, we are working on a formal petition that can be put in front of the government for actual debate. The real expectation and advice is that the law could be changed in cases where there is no direct family connection. If we can achieve that it would be a really great step forward in Sierra Leone and end a lot of suffering - and hopefully copied in neighbouring countries where the practice is much the same.

Quick warning: this is quite a shocking example (but it’s not the worst case ever)

We had a young girl come in over two years ago in a terrible physical state caused by the absolute brutality of a woman who using her as a slave. It’s a case that made all of our bloods boil and all the early reports and pictures I saw of her were x-rays and a battered body with injuries to the back of her skull and fractured bones in her back (where she had been beaten while cowering), broken limbs and internal injuries to many organs plus signs of other injuries that I am not going to go in to.

Despite having the police involved we have never managed to get the woman prosecuted and she has consistently refused to give information to help us find where the child came from. The girl was very lucky to survive even, but through her own strength of character and the support of our staff she has made a great recovery and has blossomed into an intelligent, healthy and lovely child. We still hope to locate her parents, but for now we have recently found a family willing to offer long term fostering so hopefully life will be much better in the long run. When I next visit I plan to visit her personally and make sure that her future and a good education are secured. But the good news is that hopefully she will soon be leaving us ……. with all our love.

And on that note I will wrap up this letter.

Thanks for all your support as always to help us work for these children.

Everything we do is only possible thanks to the reliable goodwill of you, our supporters.

Very best wishes

Philip

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

A great bit of news is courtesy of the ladies from the Sierra Leone Cultural Women Organisation (mostly expat Sierra Leonean ladies living in the UK). They approached us last year offering support, and over the past months have helped completely upgrade the dining room. It was pretty unexciting with very basic wooden shutters instead of windows and definitely a candidate for a makeover.

It now has bigger and much brighter windows, a lovely new marble effect tiled floor, the entire ceiling has been removed and opened up to the space above and the roof fixed, everything has been decorated with a fresh paint job, fun murals on the walls, new tables, benches and dinner plates have been provided.

The room was officially opened by them with a ceremony and a special lunch on the 28th February. The refreshed dining room has been dedicated to our dear friend and manager Augustine Baker and his wife Bundo, who both lost their lives in St George’s fight to help Ebola orphans. That was a real tragedy for their family and their own children who we still help their grandparents support. Augustine performed his incredibly brave work helping children during the Ebola crisis. Ebola cost him and his wife their lives and Augustine features in this BBC News footage.

The photos show the room as it now looks and the children tucking into a celebratory meal during the opening ceremony.

A huge thank you to Grace and her ladies for their support – the room is lovely!

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

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

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

Hello All

I hope you are all well – I’d like to share some of my favourite photos from my recent trip.

St George Foundation is now twenty years old; we are fully integrated into the local society and work with local Police, Social services and government.  I met with two government ministers on my trip and both were full of praise for what we do. 

We have actually had over 3,000 children live with us now!  And we currently have about 300 a year coming through and staying with us at the home.  It is astonishing what we have done with your support and we do it all with 99% of the money donated getting to the actual cause.

And we are unique - We are the only children’s centre in Freetown and the surrounding area that will accept any child in need of help without question.   You will see in the photos abandoned babies (found in the streets) and disabled babies (left out to die), sadly many abuse cases coming through as well as the range of children that have been found and rescued from the streets.

My favourite picture of the whole trip was Yeama with babies on her lap.  Yeama is the ‘Mother’ and manager at the home and she is just the most loving person and dedicated to the job.

Helping her is her team of house ‘Aunties’ that cook and care for the children’s daily needs – all great.

Working with them are the social workers and other staff pictures here after church on Sunday.

(in their event uniforms)

Then all the children after church where we had all been blessed – formally

We took the whole group to the beach – always and fantastic day.

Here are some of the younger ones with Aunty Sally – THE MOST SMILEY PERSON EVER!

Some of the older children

And playing in the water (the sea is literally full of rubbish as can be seen in the surf).

I took loads of games and it took me the entire trip to teach them all to them….here some are playing the shopping game

And very rare – a picture of the two founders together and still committed – 20 years on –

Justina & Philip

Last picture is actually something we do with another organisation – Vibrant Villages where we train many of our children’s families in agriculture to help them become self-sufficient.

Thank you always for supporting us with this work – you are making a huge difference.

Very best wishes as always

Philip

Dear Supporters

As we come to another year end I am very conscious that next year will be the twentieth year of working for children in Sierra Leone. That alone is a testament to the commitment you have all shown as supporters and a real achievement to still be there and still helping children. Thank you for all your support in 2023.

Even though it may seem as though it’s been a quiet year, we have had ongoing success in areas with steady support over the year for about 45 children at any one time, we have got an office built at Grafton, we have started work on a new access road to the home (a post purchase rearrangement).  Thanks to a supporter’s generosity we are now building a new toilet block for the boys which was urgently needed after we realised the original one had structural issues.  In the last few weeks we have been informed that the national water company is laying pipes very close to our property so we can finally access a permanent water supply. 

Justina has recently married and is now Mrs Sheriff.  He is the IT and communications manager for the government education department. He is very impressed by St George and already introducing a communications systems for the staff to use, plus planning to launch a campaign for support in the USA where he has spent much of his life.  So that is very exciting on more than the personal level, but we wish Justina and Ibrahim every happiness.

Unfortunately all the good things have been overshadowed though. The tragic and unnecessary death of one of our young boys a few weeks ago upset everyone… Idrissa:

Some of you may be aware that there was an attempted coup in Freetown with gunfire across parts of the city in the early hours of November 26th.  It failed, but the government announced an immediate national curfew while they dealt with the incident.  By terrible bad luck, Idrissa was taken ill the same weekend and the curfew delayed his journey to hospital by over 24 hours.  By the time the staff was able to get him admitted he had seriously deteriorated and died the following day from infection.  Understandably shaken staff took no chances when other children started feeling unwell and the following week we took 12 children to hospital for check-ups - two were in fact admitted briefly but now all have recovered and all back at the centre.  A very sad thing made worse by the fact that it may well have been so different had we been able to move him when he needed it.

On to formalities.

The AGM this year will be held on Zoom again at 10.00am on Saturday 20th January. Holding online will mean Justina and the children at the Centre should be able to join us.  We will report in more detail at the AGM, but just to let you know now, we will look at work that has been carried out in 2023 at the Centre including, fencing the land, providing security,repairing and maintaining the solar power, building new guest accommodation and building the much more robust toilet block.

Funds have been severely depleted in recent months, so any contribution would be most gratefully received.

The trustees join me in wishing you a very happy Christmas and New Year.

Philip

Since purchasing the Centre and land next door, work has continued on the site, completing the offices and subsequently providing guest accommodation.

In recent months, work has been carried out fencing off the land and ensuring good security is provided, along with maintenance to the Solar energy, roof repairs and new water pump.

We are also now rebuilding the toilet block with grateful thanks to a supporter for providing the funds.

We are hoping to hold our AGM on Saturday 20 th January 2024 at 10.00am online, but will confirm soon.

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.

Thank you to all who have supported us in 2022. We have completed the purchase of the ‘next door land’ (in addition to the Grafton Centre in 2021), built the ground floor offices at the Centre and taken in another 40 street children. None of this could have been achieved without the generosity of our supporters.

We have decided to once again hold the AGM on Zoom so that the many supporters at distance can join us, including the children and staff at the Centre in Sierra Leone. This will be held at 10.00am on Saturday 21 January and will include the financial report for last year (to 31 March 2022) and an update as to our progress and what we are hoping to achieve in 2023. If you would like to join us then, please let us know.

We wish you a very happy Christmas and New Year.

Philip and the Trustees

Update from our children's home in Sierra Leone:

There has been a strikes over prices for the past week. Yesterday it turned very ugly and violent. There are bands of marauding thugs everywhere and they were at Grafton shooting. Police and army are on the street trying to restore order but gun battles going on all around us and nationally.   

Justina is keeping all the children in the house and lying on the floor.  Planning what we do in worst case scenario.

Sadly one child is dead from gunshots, but was not in the center at the time.

It is ongoing situation.

I know a lot of you have been greatly concerned and often we have had questions about how Duke is getting.

We have news of his operation.

As you know he suffered terrible burns to his bottom and has not been able to go to the toilet naturally since before we got involved.  He did suffer a period of very unstable health at the beginning but our local team have done a very professional job getting him help and making him feel safe and welcome.  He has greatly improved in health and spirit since we have cared for him and has learned to use a colostomy bag quite successfully.

On Wednesday (8th December) he will undergo an operation to restore the use of his back passage.   This will involve cutting through the scars to open him up again and a skin graft in the immediate area.   After which the expectation is that he will be able to stop using the colostomy bag and go to the toilet naturally.

He will still have another skin graft operation at a later date to deal with the large scars on his buttocks where he still has a serious problem but this operation now should restore his functions.

Of course we will update you on how the operation went and we expect many of you will have him in your thoughts and prayers on the day and as he recovers.

Great news to share and that is that we have managed to complete the purchase of the entire plot that we wanted for the St George Foundation centre. A huge thank you for the all the donations and I do have to say a very special thank you to some who were super generous. The stability gained really does change the prospects for St George in the future and owning a site with a secure water supply is so valuable and we can get on with our own plans as we choose. See this video for some drone footage of the site:

One of the things we have chosen to do is move the local office from the city onto the same site as the home and have everything in one place so the work has started to convert the guest block/store room into an office with new guest accommodation being built above it (hint there – we really would like supporters to visit when completed). The whole conversion is relatively inexpensive at around £5000 so we will have to raise that but hopefully if people can visit and stay on site it will repay itself quite quickly.

Purchase costs raised

One supporter who has made it out there is showing commitment! Back in the UK and helping raise funds - our friend Abid Gangat is doing a 100 mile bike ride very soon to raise funds. Please do visit his link to see a bit more and encourage him?  https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Abid-Gangat

Good luck Abid!

We have all the money to buy the 'next door land' to the centre, including money for tax and legal fees. Thank you so much to all who have donated towards this appeal.

We hope to complete the purchase within the next month.

We have made a great effort this year to purchase the site at Grafton. This has now happened and we are in the process of purchasing the adjoining bit that goes down to the river.

Thank you all for your help with this!  We thought you might like to see what we bought.

Below is a little film of the site that was created using a drone - this is even fascinating for us to see it from this view point!  You can clearly see all our buildings and the playing field in front that leads down to the road.

Just for information we are looking at the group of rectangular buildings that the film focuses on and the building behind the trees belong to the Scouts. 

The Grafton site and our centre now belongs to St George Foundation! This is a huge step forward for us as an organisation that will bring a level of stability for future years and we would very much like to say a very sincere thank you for all of your support and to those particularly who have helped fund that purchase.

We have now turned our attention to securing the other part of the site and plan to bring that into use for an environmental project which is going to become an ever increasing area of concern for Sierra Leone and the children we are working with.  Much more details to come on that though.

The cost is a further $35,000 (£26,000) and we have now have only £3,000 left to raise! Loans or donations will be very welcome. Any loans will be repaid within 5 years.

We are delighted to announce that this week we completed the purchase process of the Grafton site and it now belongs to St George Foundation. It is a huge step forward for us as an organisation that will bring a level of stability for future years and we would very much like to say a very sincere thank you for all of your support and to those particularly who have helped fund that purchase.

We are now going to turn our attention to securing the other part of the site and plan to bring that into use for an environmental project which is going to become an ever increasing area of concern for Sierra Leone and the children we are working with.  Much more details to come on that though.

The cost is a further $35,000 (£26,000) and we have now have only £9,000 left to raise! Loans or donations will be very welcome. Any loans will be repaid within 5 years.

Thank you to our supporters for your continuing donations and support.

With your help we have purchased the Centre and land for $35,000, and would now like to purchase the next-door site. This will ensure we do not have developments on our boundary, and will allow much easier access to our Well. The cost is a further $35,000, but we expect to be able to raise about $10,000 of this sum in Sierra Leone.

Loans or donations will be very welcome. Any loans will be repaid within 5 years.

Family Tracing and Reunification

Over the summer we are pleased to say that we have traced and reunified 20 children with their families. That’s 11 girls and 9 boys back where they should be And the parents very happy to have their children back!

Provide life skills and psychosocial first aid to children at the ICC As always we hope that a stay at St George Foundation gives skills to children that help with their ongoing lives. This is wide ranging from oral and body hygiene to cultural dance, drama and singing. Singing and dancing have always been a core part of what we do and great activities that can involve all the children and get them all joining in. Story telling is also a skill the children will learn and without modern day distractions the other children listen with real interest and enthusiasm and we hold competitions with this too.

Follow up visit on UK Sponsored Children

Over the August holiday we have been monitoring sponsored children. A total of 40 boys and 21 girls we followed up in mostly village locations. This involved not only the children but their care givers and the local schools they attend. The vast majority of children were successfully contacted and it was clear that we do need to keep supporting these children to go to school.Many were feeling the pressure of additional school charges, text books and food. Most have the children are performing well and some children have moved onto technical learning of trades which is encouraging.

Award

As you mostly know we work with another charity Toybox on certain projects and in particular street work. One of those joint projects is to work with children in the Mabella community and they appreciated our efforts so much that a group for people from Mabella came to the Scout Camp and presented us with an award. They were recognizing the work we had done in their community to get hundreds of children back to school (who were not attending and on the edge of being street children) and also establishing a savings and loan scheme for local families.

Medical Report

Over the summer months for us it’s the rainy season in Sierra Leone and a time when people are more prone to being ill. Over July and August we 8 children and 7 members of staff that needed hospital attention. Five children were suffering from fevers caused by heavy colds, two with malaria and a boy with a heart condition. The really sad news is that having joined forces with another charity Caritas they found the funding for him to travel to India for a lifesaving operation – but he died of before we could get him there.

Present number of children at the ICC.

Over the whole summer we actually reunified 28 children and took in 20 new ones. Its actually one of the lowest number of children residential that we have had for a long time with just 27 children currently living with us (12 boys and 15 girls)

Duke continues to join in with the other children at The Centre. Doctors recently decided that he was not yet ready for his operation, but he will continue to be closely monitored.

Thank you for all your donations and support so far!

We're now getting nearer to our goal of purchasing the Grafton Site land. Read more about our plan to purchase the site announced earlier this month.

The St George Foundation has been given the opportunity to purchase the land used for our site.

We have managed (with the Scouts goodwill I have to say) to agree price probably about a third of the true market value.  That came about by taking into consideration the developments that we have created over the years.  The prices have rocketed in the last few years since a main road connected the area directly with Freetown city. In order to make it affordable we have split the site into two plots...the part we use on a daily basis and absolutely have to have, and a section that we would like for future development which we also currently occupy (if we can raise the funds).

We have agreed a price for the priority bit of $35,000 (US dollars; approximately £25,000) on around 2 acres which includes all the buildings.

The market value is about three times that and the Scouts have in fact sold an adjacent piece of land for the full value. On top of this there are also expenses and taxes due (much like our own stamp duty that need to be covered).

Following some fundraising, we now have $27,500 (£20,000) available and we are appealing to supporters to make loans for the remaining balance?

We currently pay $10,000 per annum in rent and so this will no longer happen and we propose that any money loaned is paid back out of the sum over the next few years until the money is repaid.

Of course if anyone would like to donate the money we would be very grateful.

The main objective in buying the site is that it gives security to continue the work over the coming years and at some point a new generation can take over.

Hello All,

It is a big day in St George Foundation today.

May the 5^th 2004 (17 years ago today) Justina and a group of volunteers she had from church and her college days  fed a group of 35 children some lunch and supper in the grounds of someone else’s orphanage and filled their afternoon with some activities.  It was all out of their spare time and my spare money and some inspirational support from people around us.

The following day Justina called in a bit of a state…there were 50 children at the gate before she even got there! So they all got fed and they all joined what was to become the St George family and they all became brothers and sisters and all the volunteers became aunties and uncles.  By the August holiday we had rented the first house and moved 68 children in and the St George work really began to grow into what we have done ever since.

We will be holding a prayer service on the weekend to give thanks to God for his blessings and especially for blessing the lives of the children we have worked for and always seeing us through the challenges we have faced.

Today

Duke is doing great.  He still has to have his operation but he is now quite well and joining in life with the other children and is now just one of the kids.

The children from the fire were able to benefit from a social centre we opened (in a tent provided by the Red Cross) along with the Catholic Church locally to give counselling support, meals and school activities and some fun for the children who lost their homes in the fire.  Thirty five children actually  came to live in with us who were in the most need and a couple of them that were suffering from smoke inhalation are now recovered.

A week ago we were donated a bus for a day and managed to take 80 children for a visit to the university and a tour of the highlights of Freetown followed by cultural talks from some visitors.

Life goes on

A special thanks to all of you that support us both financially and morally through all the times we have had.

With very best wishes

Philip

Two of our disabled children have just received brand new all terrain wheelchairs. These will make a huge difference to their quality of life as their current ones were almost falling to bits.

Many thanks to our friends around Hythe near Southampton and especially the two ladies that saw the need when they visited St George last year and came home with the inspiration to help these two children.

Also donated at the same time are football shirts. The kids always love these things.  Thank you guys!

Thank you too for James from Practical Tools who flew to Freetown and took these in his luggage and made the time while on his own trip to pass by St George Foundation to make the delivery in person.

St. George Foundation Sierra Leone organized a series of activities for children during the festive season.

Festive season starts as early as November every year. It is a great time and a magical experience for young children, as they encounter all of its wonders: the expectation of waiting and counting the days till Santa Claus’s visit, the years of tradition are there too, to explore.

The activities are organized every year for children in the Interim Care Center at Grafton. However, we also extend invitations to other children like the past beneficiaries of St. George Foundation who live in various communities within the Western Area Rural District, and the Street Children, the Organization is currently working with across different communities in Freetown.

Read the full December 2020 - January 2021 newsletter update from SGF Sierra Leone.

As you may know in 2008, St George Foundation moved to the Centre at Grafton, just outside Freetown. The land and buildings have never been our property and we worked in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Scouts although the site belongs to the Sierra Leone government.  At the time we agreed to renovate the buildings so that we might then have occupation for 10 years at a peppercorn rent.

When this term ended, we agreed rental payments of about £7,000 per year.

However, we have an amazing opportunity arise recently to gain the freehold of the site for a fraction of its commercial rate.  We feel this is an opportunity to give St George a stable footing for the future.  The Sierra Leone government recognise the value of our work and the efforts we have made to develop and use the site in a responsible manner for the good of the community.  As a result, they have offered to transfer the freehold to us subject to us continuing that work and effectively for the cost only of the surveys and other associated legal costs.   We therefore need to raise about £15,000 in order secure the site as opposed to raising about £150,000 to purchase a similar site on the open market.

We will be applying to several charitable trusts in order to raise the funds, but this is not an easy time to access funding.

With existing funds and one or two pledges, we should have about £4,000 towards this.

If you are able to contribute towards this most important investment, it would be very much appreciated. You can contribute via the website or Justgiving, or send cheques made payable to St George Foundation to us, care of Drovers, Chapel Road, Swanmore, Southampton SO32 2QB

To commemorate the International Day for the orphan, the Orphan Empowerment Society Sierra leone has awarded SGF for their services to support vulnerable children in Sierra Leone.

The second Monday of November each year is used to raise awareness of the plight of orphans and displaced children around the world.

The COVID-19 health pandemic and the resulting economic and labour market shock are having a huge impact on children’s lives and livelihoods. The restrictions of movement across districts, the introduction of curfew from 9:pm to 6: am, and the intermittent lockdown imposed by the government in a bid to curtail the coronavirus scourge has changed a lot of things. The coping mechanism in terms of livelihood has badly affected the children too. It has greatly affected the operations of our social workers and care givers across the board. Their working pattern has changed a bit. Most staff used to work in the office and the community daily. The restriction on movement has forced them to be working from home, more of phone calls and seldomly visiting the outside community. To many staff, this is strange and challenging. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the behaviour of many Sierra Leoneans including children. Greetings by handshaking and hugs has always been part of our culture. We have maintained this form of social interaction for years now. However, the outbreak of the Coronavirus has changed the greeting method by binding your elbow or placing your hands on your chest as a sign of greetings. This is especially a strange and difficult practice for children.

The COVID-19 outbreak has impacted many areas including the market for basic amenities and food. Before the crisis, we use to buy our basic provisions more often. This has however, changed completely because of the outbreak. The outbreak has impacted the prices of commodities in the market greatly. The cost of provision and food is too expensive. This is because, there are a limited supply of goods in the market and also, the fall of foreign exchange in the market. All these challenges have real negative effect on children and women, who are the most vulnerable in our society.

Since the COVID-19 health pandemic is so deadly, leaders throughout the world, in an effort to break the chain of transmission of the virus, have needed to enforce precautionary measures as directed by the World Health Organisation. Amongst the various safety precautions, the use of a face mask has been enforced most. To many people including children, hand washing is not too strange but the use of face masks and the rule of social distancing are very difficult for the children especially those with asthmatic condition, and also during play time. The measures, through necessarily being enforced in good haste, has limited the interactive freedom of the children and is, consequently, making them quite stressed.  

The government has made these measures compulsory for everyone. This is especially important, since it is very difficult to determine the well-being of everyone you interact with. Most institutions including the Security Sector and Drivers’ Union have helped the government in enforcing these policies in order to help reduce the spread of the contagious corona scourge.

All the government restrictions including the Stay at Home policy have greatly affected the activities of staff and also the activities of the children. Educationally, the children are not attending schools currently. Socially, their interactive and playing style has been limited, because people are not allowed to be crowded together.

The closing of school disrupts the life of children. However, there are volunteers currently at the Interim Care Centre at Grafton. The volunteers are school teachers who provide temporary teaching to the children on a daily basis. In response to the challenge of the children not being allowed to go school, the St George Foundation employed volunteer teachers in order to give the children some education while in lockdown. An agreement was signed to include all the policies (Child protection, child safeguarding policy, Police clearance, Volunteer policy and the code of conduct) of St George Foundation. They have over five years of teaching experience in unrelated areas in community schools, and have knowledge in child protection, child safeguarding and child code of conduct and counselling. Some of the areas they teach these children include, English Language, Mathematics, Hygiene, Social Studies, Home economics, Quantitative, Verbal aptitude, Sounds and Phoenix, Writing and Health education etc...

The teachers have made their relevance known amongst the children.

By not just teaching but providing social support and counselling, the children are very appreciative of them. Many of the children have made it known that the arrangement to provide the education is very timely, and it is keeping them busy at this difficult moment.

Sierra Leone has continued to experience lockdown and curfews. Fortunately, only 53 deaths from Covid-19 have been recorded in the country to date.

As a consequence of lockdown, and in order to keep costs to a minimum, 11 staff were made redundant at the end of March. The usual annual tracing and reunification of rescued children is now underway with a view to placing the 2019/20 children back in the community, with families.

It continues to be a challenge for St George Foundation to be able to bring in enough income to meet the costs (essentially just salaries, food and provisions), while fund raising activities are curtailed.

We understand that Sierra Leone recorded their first Coronavirus (COVID-19) case on 31 March.

The Government have decided to lockdown the country from 4th April for 2 weeks. It is widely expected that this may well be extended.

As a consequence, 11 staff have been made redundant, and all children and staff will remain at the Centre for the duration of the lockdown. Food, provisions and drugs have been obtained for this period.

For the next few months it is expected to be a challenge for St George Foundation to be able to bring in enough income to meet the costs (essentially just salaries, food and provisions).

Fatima (not her real name) came to us at the age of 13 in July of 2019 and is now 14 years old. We met her at one of our Wednesday feeding sessions last summer and she has lived with us ever since at the children's' home in Freetown.

Fatima's father had left the family and then Fatima and her mother fell out and she was driven out of the house. With nowhere else to go she ended up living in the street and homeless. When we met her she accepted our help and came to the children's home to live with us and she started attending school and settled down and doing well.

Sometime later we realised that she was pregnant and the story came out of what had happened to her. She had been gang raped by a group of men and boys but had kept it to herself. During this incident she had become pregnant. She was unable to identify any of the men involved and so no prosecution or justice has been possible.

We did trace her mother and try and reunite them some weeks ago but the mother now realised she was pregnant and said she was a disgrace to the family and refused to have her back.

She was now heavily pregnant in January 2020 and seriously did not want to have the baby. Secretly and unbeknownst to us she found a 'witch doctor' that provided her with some herbs to drink that would cause a miscarriage. Over last weekend we realised that she was very ill and rushed her to hospital where the doctors attempted to save the baby. Unfortunately it was already dead inside of her and so was removed by the doctors. After two days she has come back to the home and is recovering.

This is obviously very traumatic for her and she will receive counselling from our staff and we will try again to reunite her with her mother. Sadly without the pregnancy or a baby it might actually prove easier this time, but she is a reformed character who is studying well at school and otherwise life is looking more positive.

Recent Activities

• Building bridges for learning opportunities for children.
• Outreach programs with children to build and reinforce children’s confidence and social development.
• Enhancing education for children with support from external and internal volunteers.
• Positioning the organisation through networking and collaboration with partner organisation and private individuals.

Other Updates

• 19 girls and 11 boys have been admitted at the ICC since January 2019.
• 17 girls and 10 boys have been reunited with their families.
• 99% of enrolled children were promoted to new classes this academic year.

Flood Children

Nursing Volunteers

A nurse from St George Church in Germany will be visiting the Centre from October to end of December. She will be concentrating on training the staff and the resident Centre nurse in particular.

It is also planned for her to be working on a programme with the severely disabled children, who have all improved considerably since Hilary visited the Centre earlier in the year.  Even though Hilary was ill much of the time and returned early, it seems she has planted a seed that has been really positive for these children.

A volunteer student paediatric nurse is also going to visit the Centre in early October, as she has a nursing placement in two hospitals in Freetown. It is hoped that both she and St George Foundation will benefit from her visit.

Water Update

We are hoping to have clean water piped in soon.

CRS (Catholic Relief service) bought land for a community group at Grafton, very close to the Centre. They have their own large dam that supplies them with water and the community is in agreement that St George can access that water, but it has to pass a neighbouring (industrial)  property to reach the main road and then the pipes will be laid along the  highway so avoiding private property and the scouts land.

Electricity

We are also expecting to be connected to the electricity supply soon.

We have paid our deposit (50%), but the electricity company is waiting for the remainder of the neighbouring properties that want electricity to pay their deposits too in order to make the final connections.  It seems that the electricity company is waiting for a critical mass to have paid to justify completing this. 

There has been serious flooding, loss of life and displaced children in Freetown, who urgently need help. The following news appeal is provided by Justina Conteh from St George Foundation in Sierra Leone.

Tackling shocks and depression experiences by children affected by flooding in Freetown area

Over 2 months (August and September 2019), this project will provide temporal shelter, food and non-food items for 100 children displaced by flood waters in Bathurst, Regent, Kaningo, Culvert, Congo Town Bridge and Tombo communities in Western Area Urban and Rural districts. This would help the children to recover from the disaster, and prepare them to safely return to their families and begin schooling in September 2019. It will further help the affected children gain access to key facilities, like temporal shelter, food, clothing and learning materials to enhance short, medium and long-term growth and development.

Expected Results

100 children in Bathurst, Regent, Kaningo, Culvert, Congo Town Bridge and Tombo communities displaced by flood waters in Freetown and environs are protected through the provision of temporal shelter, and food and non-food items to help them recover from effects of depression and shocks experienced during the floods, and to better prepare them to return to their families and schools in good health.

The project will be led St George Foundation, in partnership with St George Foundation UK, Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs and participating communities.

Why it matters

On August 2nd 2019, Freetown experienced heavy rainfall causing severe flooding in the whole city including communities of Regent, Culvert, Congo Town Bridge, Bathurst and Kaningo. On the same day, a mudslide occurred in Bathurst community killing two persons; and flood waters damaged homes, wrecked household assets, and injured people particularly women and children in the above communities. On 6th August 2019 again, another devastating flood took place in Tombo, a fishing village very close to Waterloo which left hundreds of families displaced. It is estimated that over 800 flood affected children presently need shelter, food and clothing support.

Project Activities

1. Collaborate with the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs to enrol 100 flood affected children at the St. George Interim Care Centre in Grafton for 2 months
2. Provide food and non-food items including learning materials for 100 flood affected children
3. Reunite children with their families and communities

Overall budget: £5000

Why St George Foundation?

St George Foundation, Sierra Leone, has vast experience in humanitarian emergency work including children affected by flood.

As can be seen from the above SGF in Sierra Leone urgently need about £5000 in order to help 100 affected children. Please donate whatever you can to help.

Aruna has been the centre manager for several years. He is perfect for the role - very caring and responsible.

Unfortunately, he has discovered that his wife has a hole in the heart and needs an urgent operation. They are raising $6,000 in order to have an operation in Ghana. We have been raising funds specifically for this purpose, and hoped to raise up to $1,500. We have sent $750 already, so are hoping to raise more funds.

Children at the Centre

The 2018 intake of children at the Centre are reunified with relations, following an extensive tracing exercise. A new intake of around 30 children will then be rescued from the streets of Freetown. It is hoped they will have settled sufficiently to be able to attend school for the 2019/20 academic year.

Supply of Clean Water

The water pipes were previously connected to the dam but have been vandalised, and as the dam is some distance from the Centre it is difficult to provide security.

Water is urgently needed by the end of the rainy season (end October). It looks like we may be able to connect the Centre to another organisation’s own water source, with their agreement. We need to raise funds in order to pay for the necessary materials and labour. Budget awaited.

Electricity Connection

Up to now electricity has been provided by a generator, which has sometimes failed. We are now about to be able to connect to a mains supply. The cost is £1,000, and this has been provided by a generous supporter. Connection work is underway and connection should be made within a few weeks.

Abdul is 13 years old and was attending the God’s Project Academy primary school at Regent. He was living with both parents at the above address.

Abdul deeply remembers the mudslide which took away his parents by surprise. He remembers when a sound struck like a thunder, but he was still asleep due to the down pour of rain at about 7:am. He was woken up from his sleep when his father told him to go outside the house and that something is about to happen, so he became afraid as many people were running from one point to another to protect their lives. As Abdul’s father tried to help them cross them over to the other side of the road, flood water sweep the entire family away, and Abdul was rescued from the flood water by another man who took him out to safety. He was admitted at the Connaught hospital, and was there for two weeks before he was referred us for temporary care and support. He was provided with support and psycho-social first aid treatment because of the trauma.

Abdul is now coping well with other children as his life has turned around again. He is happy and we're planning to enrol him in the coming school year, because there is a great potential in the little boy.

On the 14th August, 2017 at about 7:00am in the morning, Fatmata was asleep with her two children in the same house (aged 7yrs and 1yr 10 months). At around 7:30am the rain was pounding the ground furiously she was not able to go out as usual in the market, after few minutes she overheard a strange sound like a crash nearby, her children were still sleeping enjoying the beat of the rain fall that wonderful morning.

She was so terrified when the land slide occurred within two seconds, Fatmata and her entire neighbourhood were covered in mud buried underneath the earth. She was absolutely in ‘a death row’ when well-wishers arrived at the scene started digging out the debris. Fatmata said she was very lucky to be rescued by the volunteers but could not find her two beloved children in the rubble. She sustained serious injuries due to the heavy rocks coming from the hills. She was admitted at the Connaught hospital for two weeks before she was later referred to us for temporary shelter and counselling.

When Fatmata arrived she was traumatized and could not see her two children. She started crying when she saw other children playing with their brothers or sisters. She was provided with daily to help de-traumatize her from this terrible event.

Fatmata was also provided with further medication and now her life is much more stable than before. She has started interacting well with others as she slowly recovers from pains and agony of disaster.

Fatmata plans to establish a business after this trauma with the support of St George Foundation to help her regain her confidence.

Since the flooding and landslide disaster occurred on August 14th 2017 in Freetown, we have been working collaboratively with the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children Affairs and other child protection partners all referring Children and Adults at our interim care centre (ICC) at Grafton for temporary shelter while awaiting family tracing and reunification.

We're playing a leading role in protecting children and adult in need of support, following the landslide. Most of the affected children referred at the ICC have lost primary caregivers and other extended family members in the disaster. During the referral process many of the children and adults were traumatized due to the magnitude of the land slide, which was beyond any  expectation. It is still a surprise to many of the victims as they recover slowly from the devastating shock. Counselling services were provided by our staff on a daily basis to de-traumatized the affected victims as they arrived daily.

Food, shelter, clothing, toiletries and medication are being provided on a daily basis though much is needed to be done based on the capacity of the number of children and adults currently residing at the ICC. Many of the adults have lost hope, because it will be difficult for some of them to start their life again, as many of them were engaged in small scale business and have lost everything.

As children do easily forget what has happen to them by playing together. This always brings them lot of joy and helps them to support each other. Many children have started asking questions as to whether they will be able to attend school again. Some of the children were the only survivors of their family left when the flood water wiped away their parents while trying to save them. Counselling is provided to all, both those who seem happy, as well as those still clearly suffering psychologically from the disaster. 

We've been called into action by Department of Social Welfare and UNICEF (alongside Don Boscoes and SOS Children's Centre) to get involved with the emergency relief effort ‎following the mudslide and extensive flooding to Freetown. 

There are a huge number of children separated from their families, so the three organisations will work to register them and provide immediate care. We also being asked to provide counselling services.

We are aiming to prepare 50 beds on but do not have the funds to support this many children. We have requested assistance from UNICEF and others, but anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated - please click donate now button for ways to help

All our children and staff are OK, and we are not aware of any children being affected that have previously ‎stayed with us. The hillside above the centre has suffered considerable deforestation and unofficial development recently and as a result a large number of rocks slid down the hill and crashed into our water reservoir. Damage to the reservoir and pipework means we currently have no water supply. ‎It is however repairable and for the moment we will have to buy in bottled water until we can fix it.

We've been busy over the last few months continuing our work to help even more homeless children off the streets of Sierra Leone. However, while we have been working hard there, we have also been working hard here.

Over the next few weeks, you will see the launch of our brand new St George Foundation website, as well as increased news and events being publicised via our social media channels.

Look out for the news, follow us, and please continue to support the work we do each day in Sierra Leone to help the hundreds of children left to fend for themselves without the care or love of their immediate family - something we all very much take for granted.

We're award winners!

‘’Give honours to those who honours are due’’ This is the direct quotation of His Excellency, President Ernest Bai Koroma, President of Sierra Leone, during his special award giving ceremony organised for deserving NGOs, INGO, Individuals, private institutions and MDAs at the State House on State Avenue, Freetown. St. George Foundation-SL was one of the NGOs that received the special presidential awards as one of the outstanding organisation that championed the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone.

The Director of Ben Hirsch Child Protection on the left and the Executive Director of St. George Foundation, Justina Conteh, on the right with the Sierra Leone Director of GOAL-Ireland in the middle. 

Football superstar Samuel Eto (UNICEF, Goodwill Ambassador) visited the ST George Foundation Interim Care Centre at Grafton, Freetown, Sierra Leone as part of the FIFA Eleven for Health campaign. He was joined by FIFA's Chief Medical Officer Professor JiÅ™í DvoÅ™ák and President of the Sierra Leone Football Association, Mrs Isha Johansen.

They were touring facilities being utilised by Ebola affected children, child survivors and extremely vulnerable children, and our centre was chosen as was one of only two centres accredited by the Sierra Leone government.

Velkommen Danmark!

A Danish TV programme following the story of Ebola orphans, and based on the work of the St George Foundation, is being aired today. We very much hope that new Danish friends will soon be helping us.

The film can be found on the DR TV website: www.dr.dk/tv/se/horisont/horisont-2015-08-24

Sierra Leone has its first 7 days with no new Ebola cases. Great news and potentially great progress.

British Army – throughout the Ebola crisis, members of the British Army have been visiting St George children’s home in their spare time as well as on official duties. They have been a great source of fun for the children but most amazingly have transformed our buildings. They have tackled the plumbing, built an incinerator, supported the staff, and have stunningly decorated the buildings.

Huge praise and thanks for those involved…it's stunning!

The British Army are now back in the UK. Members of the British Army have returned and met us with stories of what a fantastic job our team on the ground are doing. The consensus is that St George stands head and shoulders above everything else they witnessed. We are now working with them to find ways to raise the standards of other orphanages through a proposed mentoring scheme.

We have started assisting children in another area – Port Loco. It is an area near the Guinea border where Ebola has hit very hard and left many children in an extreme state. We have managed to get 200 back into school and are monitoring 500 families to spot those in the most desperate need.

Tulip Mazumdar revisits Sierra Leone to follow up on Augustine's death and his legacy. Check out the BBC news article here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33581446

Ebola cases and the pressure on the teams in Sierra Leone and UK are gradually easing. Despite being very tired and having suffered huge stress the team in Sierra Leone carries on with supporting orphans.

Update, August 2015: With the benefit of hindsight we realise this, Easter 2015, was a turning point.

EVERY SINGLE STAFF MEMBER stayed at their post despite huge risks and real fear and pressure and handled with dignity the loss of a much loved and valued team member when the manager Augustine Baker himself contracted and died of Ebola.

We are delighted to have news that Augustin Baker's three children are also now out of quarantine and all healthy. They are temporarily in care while final arrangements for their future are being sorted.

The quarantine on our orphanage has now lifted and all children and staff inside are healthy which is fantastic news.

Augustin and Bundu Baker's children will remain in quarantine (not at the St George site) for a further ten days following Bundu's death on 4 March.

Announcement following BBC News at One report today:

We have just received the terrible news that Bundu Baker, Augustin's wife, died of Ebola this morning. Our thoughts are with Augustin and Bundu's two young children at this awful time.

The St George Foundation will be looking after their children (a girl aged 7 months and a boy aged 7 years) and will ensure they get a good education when the Ebola outbreak is over.

If anyone would like to support these children please make donations directly to us but use the reference "Staff orphans" on the bank transfer or cheque, or contact us after donating to let us know your PayPal/JustGiving donation is for these children.

Some good news: the four children who were sent to an observation unit and tested for Ebola have all had negative (i.e. Ebola-free) results.

Update on Ebola quarantine at St George Foundation orphanage:

Sadly Augustin Baker's wife, Bundu, has also now been taken seriously ill with Ebola.

In addition, four children in our care have developed temperatures so have been taken to an observation unit. We should have test results back within a couple of days.

We will post updates here in due course. Thank you for your thoughts at this difficult time.

News of Augustin Baker's death and a tribute to him was given this morning on BBC Radio 4's Today program. You can listen to the clip below:

It is with great sadness we share the news that Augustin Baker has died after contracting Ebola last week.

Augustin has worked tirelessly to help children in our care orphaned by the disease and has been particularly active reaching out to help Ebola orphans in affected communities. His loss will be very greatly felt by all of us at St George Foundation.

Augustin featured in the BBC News report broadcast about the St George Foundation last month, and his death has also been reported on their website: bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-31624149

A St George Foundation staff member has contracted Ebola:

On Wednesday 18th Feb, staff member Augustin Baker (featured on the BBC broadcast) collapsed and rushed to the hospital.

Augustin was transferred to Kerry Town Ebola Treatment Centre on Thursday 19th Feb and Ebola was confirmed. Four staff were exposed while assisting Augustin to hospital

On Friday 20th Feb the St George children's centre put under quarantine. 10 staff and 25 children confined to the centre for 21 days.

As of today, Sunday 22nd Feb, Augustin is as well as can be expected at this stage and was transferred to the British centre for Ebola volunteers who may become infected.

BBC News article on 23rd Feb reporting on the current situation at our centre: bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-31587180