Handwashing Stations for Schools

Sponsor a Handwashing Station for a School in Sierra Leone

While many schools in Sierra Leone have toilets a lot of them don't have handwashing facilities.

Handwashing is a simple, but vital, way of reducing transmission of a large variety of illnesses that cause significant morbidity and potential mortality. This obviously has an impact on attendance at school and educational attainment.

You can make a difference by sponsoring a handwashing station. £50 will buy a bucket with tap and stand. 

You can make a donation for a handwashing station via our Wonderful account.

If you donate via wonderful please drop us an email (info@transformsalone.org) so we can ensure we assign it to the correct project.

If you would like to gift this to someone a gift card can be arranged.

(by H Young)

Supplies!!

Three days shopping and one whole day preparing the school bags and supplies for our sponsored students!!! 

Pictured are just some of the bags and supplies.

Free Education

The government in Sierra Leone is making great strides to improve education. They have announced free education from primary school through to the end of senior secondary school for students attending state schools

Education sponsorship is a large part of the work of Transform Salone so we are thrilled that many more students will now have access to education.

I'm sure our sponsors are keen to learn how this may effect their sponsorships. Most of our students will not benefit from the free education as they attend community, private or mission schools - so for us and those sponsors things will carry on as usual.

For the few students who we support in state schools we waiting to find out exactly what will be included in the free education and as we learn more we will keep our sponsors updated.

We have been informed that the free education will cover school fees, essential text books and some school supplies - but we are waiting for the schools to open later this month for that to be confirmed. We will contact any sponsors of state school attending students individually. We envisage that the students will still need the sponsorships to cover all other costs associated with their education and we look forward to continuing to support these students.

We appreciate our sponsors so much and the help they are giving the students is invaluable. Please contact us at info@transformsalone.org if you'd like more information about our sponsorship scheme or if you feel you'd like to sponsor a student in Sierra Leone.

Parents Meetings

Before every school year starts I hold parents meetings with all the parents/guardians and students to go over any issues and let them know of any changes to the sponsorship programme.

Soon after I arrived back in Sierra Leone after a wonderful few weeks in Portsmouth with my lovely husband I scheduled a parents meeting. I was very disappointed that an hour after the start time only one parent and seven students had shown up out of the 70 or so I was expecting. Sometimes the seeming lack of interest of the families and students can be disheartening.

I can't start the work of enrolling the students for the new school year until we've held a parent's meeting, so all the work I had planned for the week after the failed meeting had to be put on hold.

Parents meeting, take 2 🎬 was a lot more successful than the first try!! Almost all the students were represented by a parent, guardian, or family member, and most arrived early!!
At the start of the meeting there were a few people I'd never seen before who must've seen people gathering and decided to join in, we politely explained that they couldn't stay for the meeting!!
We kicked off the meeting with Muslim and Christian prayer and then jumped straight in to go over the issues, review the code of conduct and make appointments for the individual meetings I have to have with every student.

We talked about how the parents need to be involved in their children's education, about the behaviour problems of some of the students.......and how with me being a foreigner I'm not going to wait until 7pm for a 3pm meeting!!!

The meeting went well - so well I couldn't get people to leave after the meeting had ended!!

One student did turn up 3 hours late and was politely (as politely as I could manage) asked to make an appointment for another day!

Dangers of Facebook

We sometimes run sessions with our kids in Sierra Leone about the dangers of Facebook, I can never be sure if they take the advice or just think I'm being am old fuss pot.

Imagine my shock when I logged into Facebook and some naked pictures of someone I know showed up on my timeline......but they weren't photos of one of the kids.......these were photos of an adult you'd expect to know better!!!! We'll call him Mr X.

He had send nudie photos to someone he thought was a pretty young French lady, turns out it was man hiding behind the profile and he was now threatening to ruin Mr X unless he paid them $2,000.

I have no idea how Mr X dealt with it, the photos were removed and the French lady's profile is no longer there.

How embarrassing though, I'm embarrassed and to be honest a bit disgusted that I saw the photos.
I would imagine that Mr X is embarrassed as quite a lot of his friends had commented on the photos before they were removed.
I wonder if Mr X's wife saw the photos or is aware of them (oh yes, Mr X is a married man who you'd have thought would have no business sending photos of his privates to young ladies!!).
Even worse, what if his kids saw them??

This is a perfect example though of why people need to be careful who they make friends with on Facebook and not to believe that everyone is who they say they are.

One thing is for sure, I'm not looking forward to seeing Mr X again in a hurry now that I've seen so much more of him than I'd ever have wanted to!!!!

A Funny Old Week…..

I arrived back in Freetown with my niece a week ago today after a short break in the UK, it’s been a bit of a strange week……some good, some not so good……

The journey was mostly really good – I usually prefer to travel alone, but this time I travelled with Carla (my niece). We had over 5 hours to wait for our connecting flight in Casablanca, as it was Carla’s birthday we shared cakes and coffee while I sang happy birthday……repeatedly. I like Casablanca airport, it’s cheaper than most and the cakes are lovely! Carla kindly let me sit next to the window for both flights, we had a nice young man alongside us for the first flight who joined in with us when we said grace before eating our meal. The lady next to Carla on the second flight wasn’t quite so nice and dumped her bags and her smelly feet under the seat in front of Carla, in Carla’s space – but Carla managed to hold her tongue…I’m not sure I could have been so gracious.

Part of my morning routine is feeding the chickens, we have: Marjory, Deirdre, Mabel, Ethel, Gladys, Eeny, Meenie, Miney, Mo, Bernard, Snap, Crackle, Pop, Bang, Sprout, Spud and Augustus. Augustus is the biggest cockerel I have ever seen and he doesn’t like me, he really doesn’t like me. He tries to intimidate me, when I’m facing him he’s not so bad, but as soon as I turn my back he attacks me. I’m not proud to admit that he scares me!

I have a bit of a problem with my eyes, my eyelids and undereyes are really itchy and a bit scaly from where I keep rubbing them – the eyes themselves are ok, but the surrounding skin is red and swollen and not very pretty. My favourite doctor in the world, Dr Koroma, has prescribed me some tablets that I have to take three times a day so hopefully whatever it is will clear up soon, I had the same thing in September, but it cleared up on it’s own accord that time after a couple of weeks.

The weather is odd for November. I’ve always found November and March to be the hottest months, so I was bracing myself for some serious heat, but it’s much cooler this year. We have had a lot of storms, thunder, lightning, rain, wind – the whole shebang – fortunately mostly at nights so it’s not affected work.

I was saddened to find out that some of our sponsored boys played truant to go to the beach, putting their sponsorship in jeopardy – I’m sure their sponsors aren’t going to be impressed to hear about it. For two of the students it’s their last year in school and they are working towards their end of school exams – they need all the time in school they can get and any missed schooling will affect their chance of passing the exams. I’m so sad to learn that for these few boys their education isn’t as important to them as I thought it was.

We’ve enjoyed catching up with ‘our kids’ and finding out what they are all up to. It was lovely to see Baby Freecall looking so healthy and happy. We’ve been able to help them buy a mattress for Aunty and Freecall. Aunty wants to start a small business selling various items from a portable box so she doesn’t have to keep asking us for money and can become self sufficient. The startup cost will be around £75 – if anyone is interested in helping let me know!!

At the moment we are preparing for our team of volunteers who arrive on Sunday to help with our mission – exciting!!

Getting Ready for School

My main task at the moment is getting our 80+ students ready to start the new school year in just over a week.

My spare room has been taken over to store all the supplies that we’ve bought in readiness for the students…….bags, ledgers, pens, pencils, rulers, rubbers, sharpeners, geometry sets, calculators and graph paper. With so many students it’s a huge amount of stuff.

I have a number of steps that I have to go through for each student……

First of all I collect and check their report card for the last school year to see how they did over the year, if they promoted, what their attendance and timekeeping has been like and take note of any comments from the teachers.

Next I meet with each student individually along with their guardian and we review their progress together and make a plan for the upcoming school year – after this I provide the funds for the school uniforms and shoes.

Once I’ve seen the new uniforms and shoes then we pay the school fees directly to the school. When the enrolment is complete then we give each student their school bag and supplies. After that all is left is to wait for the school to issue the text book list for the year so we can buy the essential text books for each student.

This weekend I’m having our annual parents and guardians meeting to go over the sponsorship scheme, talk about what they can expect from us and what we expect from them. I’ll go over the code of conduct and the guardians will have a chance to bring up any issues or worries they have. The parent’s meetings are usually very interactive and lively!!#

Writing it all out like this makes it seem a bit daunting, such a lot to do in such a short space of time!! I’d better get one with it!!

Back to Freetown

I travelled back to Freetown at the weekend after spending a wonderful few weeks over the summer in the UK with my husband.

The journey didn’t get off to the best start when I couldn’t check in online (I was had booked through an agent I hadn’t used before so was a little nervous there might be something wrong with the booking). I got to the airport nice and early……and just as well I did as I was told at check-in that the flight was overbooked and not all booked passengers would be able to fly – luckily I was one of the first to check in. The overbooking was the reason that online check-in wasn’t available.

I sat next to a nice lady from Ghana on the first flight, which was to Casablanca, we had a good chat about anything and everything and played a word game together on my tablet. The few hours I had to wait at Casablanca airport passed quickly as I spent some time chatting to a friendly group of ladies from Senegal who were travelling for their Haj. Everything went smoothly on arrival into Freetown, my luggage arrived and my friend was there waiting for me with my ticket for the watertaxi.

Not a lot has happened since I arrived, I had arranged to look at a vehicle yesterday and spent most of the day waiting around for that………it never did arrive and I found out today that someone else has bought it, so it obviously wasn’t the one for me.

Tomorrow I’m going to the school that I work out of to see my friend, the headmistress, and some of the sponsored students will meet me there so I can catch up on how they are doing.

It’s the rainy season here now, so it’s much cooler than when I left in June. Yesterday the rains were very heavy, buy it only rained for an hour or so today.

The next few weeks are going to be very busy – I have more than 80 students to get enrolled for the new school year starting in September as well as arranging for new uniforms, shoes, bags, books, supplies…..the list goes on and on – but before I can do any of that I need to go over their school report cards for the last school year and meet with each student and their guardian to check their progress and see how they are getting on and if any changes need to be made related to their educational needs.

Your prayers, as always, are vey much appreciated!!

Visitors

I have a bit of company with me here in Sierra Leone at the moment - Jan and Nancy, who both sponsor students under the Transform Salone sponsorship scheme are spending three weeks helping me on our projects.

We have been really busy since we all arrived in Freetown together just over a week ago. We have been to the SDA hospital in Waterloo three times once to visit the doctor and the other two times to visit a baby we have admitted there for treatment for malnutrition and malaria. Today we also admitted a girl who had been bitten by a dog.

Most afternoons we are at the school I work out of and while I’m catching up on office or sponsorship work Jan and Nancy are helping the sponsored students with their reading or the times table.

This past Sunday we attended church at the Murray Town Army Barracks where my friend Colonel Kargbo, the Chief Chaplain of the Armed Services was preaching. In the evening we treated ourselves and went to The Hub restaurant.

It is lovely to have some company and both Nancy and Jan are a great encouragement and support to me. I so appreciate them and the help they are giving me and I hope this will be the first trip of many!

Reading Group - First Session

I and a group of six students held the first session of the new reading group today!

We are reading a book called Jack Pepper by the author Sarah Lean, it’s one of the books donated by my dear friend Nancy.

We covered the first two chapters today. The students took turns reading a page or two, then we’d discuss any new words, then reread the passages again before moving onto the next section.


This group is made up of students whose will be taking exams in the next year or two - they can read quite well, but just need practice reading aloud and some help with pronunciation and the meanings of more obscure words.


I really enjoyed the session and I think the students did too. They paid attention, asked lots of questions and took it seriously, I was very impressed by how interested they were and how they all helped each other when someone struggled over a word or pronunciation. I’m looking forward to the next session in a few days time.

Parents Meeting

We had a meeting with the parents and guardians of the sponsored students at the weekend, it's the first one we've been able to have since before the Ebola outbreak because until recently there was a ban on public gatherings in place throughout Sierra Leone.

 

Since the last meeting two of our more outspoken parents have sadly passed away, and we missed them. They were both good parents who were passionate about ensuring that their children got a good education and they both participated fully in all parents meetings.

 

As usual we started with prayers - Christian and Muslim then launched into the meeting.

 

Time keeping isn't always top priority here so people kept arriving throughout the meeting and even just as we were finishing up but most families were represented and those that weren't I'm seeing individually this week.

 

I told the families that I'd like them to get more involved in the sponsorship and continue to encourage the students to study at home. Some of the children help their families by selling water, food or clothing and I've asked that they be excused from selling during term time so they can concentrate fully on their studies.

 

We have introduced a new system for discussing individual sponsorship issues and requests, the student and guardian will book an appointment with us to discuss their issue at a time chosen by them......if they are not there at the time they selected they will have to reschedule for another day. Too often we arrange to see people throughout the day, and then they all show up at the same time and all want to be heard straight away.....I'm hoping a couple of wasted meetings might encourage people to be more timely - it worked today, two people who were late yesterday were early for their rescheduled appointments today!! The only downside to this I can think of is I have to be on time otherwise I can't enforce this for others.....and to be honest timeliness isn't one of my strongest qualities, so it's something I need to work on as well!!

 

The general consensus of the parents, guardians and students is that they want us to open a school........it's a lovely dream and who knows what might happen in the future - something to be prayed about I think!!

Too Young

This is one of our sponsored girls - she's around 13 years old and, although still a little girl herself, has recently given birth to the baby she is holding.

 

It's thought that the father of the baby is in his late teens, he was arrested but the family couldn't afford to prosecute him so he's been released.

 

We are hoping that when she stops breastfeeding (which will be when the baby is around a year old) her family will allow her to return to school. She should be in Class 6 of primary school now.

At her age she should be playing with her friends, going to school, playing with dolls.....

 

Please pray for this little one, and her little one.

How It All Started

When I first started coming to Sierra Leone I helped a few of the kids by paying for their school fees, buying them bags and getting uniforms made for them......then a few more kids came along......and then more. It got to the point where I was helping with the schooling of 11 children and the number seemed sure to grow. I realised I needed help and had the idea of a sponsorship scheme.

 

The one thing I got asked for more than anything else was to help children with their schooling......and many of the volunteers who came on two week mission trips with the charity I was with at the time (Mission Direct) wanted to help the children they met - so, with the support of my Regional Director at Mission Direct, I started an education sponsorship scheme. It grew and grew and took more and more of my time until I decided it was time to leave Mission Direct to focus on the sponsorship scheme.........that's when Transform Salone was born. Since setting up Transform Salone we have expanded the sponsorship scheme to include vocational training for young adults and school leavers.

The first four boys that I started helping are all still in the scheme, three of them are now in senior school. The other boy dropped out of the scheme for a couple of years due to family problems, but he restarted in primary school earlier this year.

We now have over 70 students who are fully sponsored for their basic education or vocational training. If it hadn't been for the boys (I should really say young men) in the photos below I doubt any of it would have happened.

 

Here are the first four boys I started helping all those years ago:

 

And here they are now!

 

These four boys are fortunate to be sponsored for their education, but I know many, many other children and young adults who desperately need assistance to allow them to continue in school or progress onto vocational training. If you would be interested in sponsoring the education of a child or young adult please get in touch by following this email link and I'll send you some more details about the scheme.

Facebook Page for Transform Salone

Now that Transform Salone is a registered charity we can start fundraising in earnest and letting more people know about the work we are doing.

We've setup a Facebook page - follow the link below and give us a 'like'!!

Link to Transform Salone Facebook Page

Sad Sad News

I am sitting here in total disbelief at the terrible news that I've received......I've been trying to get my head around it since I heard a few days ago and still can't quite believe it.

 

There is  a young boy of about 12 who I've helped on and off with his education over the years by paying fees or providing school supplies from time to time.

 

He has a sister that I used to see around, playing with her friends or fetching water for her family - I haven't seen her for a while and I'd wondered where she'd got to......now I know.....

 

A couple of months ago she was sent to live with her Grandmother in the provinces to go to school there.......I was told a few days ago that she has died, she was beaten to death by her Grandmother.

 

I just don't know what to think or say......

TRANSFORM SALONE

We have cause for celebration........

 

Last year I left Mission Direct to concentrate on the educational sponsorship scheme and my community work in Sierra Leone.

Myself and three friends who also have love for Sierra Leone setup TRANSFORM SALONE, a new organisation to help people out of poverty through education.

 

I'm absolutely delighted that this week TRANSFORM SALONE has been granted charitable status by the Charity Commission - we are now a registered UK charity!!!

 

An Ebola Orphan - Angel

I've been spending quite a bit of time with a young lady I know who survived Ebola, because of the stigma attached to Ebola I'll call her Angel rather than using her real name here.

 

Angel's father became sick so her mother took care of  him.......when her mother started to get sick Angel took over looking after her father.......then Angel became sick too. They were all taken to an Ebola treatment centre. Angel's mother died first, then her father died two days later. Angel waited to die as well, but she surprised herself by recovering - after seeing her parents die she'd fully expected that she would die too.

Angel has three younger sisters and a younger brother, fortunately they all tested negative for the virus.

When Angel was discharged from hospital and returned home everything she owned was destroyed when the house was cleansed. She is now living with her Grandmother along with her younger siblings.

 

Angel is around 18 years old, at the time Ebola was at it's height she should have been starting Form 5 in school (SSS2), but the schools were closed to try to stop the virus spreading. Now that the schools have reopened there is no one to pay for her to go to school. Although the government are paying school fees there are other costs such as uniforms, text books, supplies, extra lessons....the list goes on. Her Grandmother who has suddenly found herself with 5 extra mouths to feed can't afford it.

 

All of Angel's previous school reports were destroyed when the house was cleansed - but she tells me that on her last school report she ranked 8th in her class. Her favourite subject is Cost Accounting and when she leaves school she has dreams of being a bank manager. She has 3 more years left of basic education.

Although she is keen to return to school Angel is scared to go back to her former school because some of the other students know that she had Ebola and she thinks they will mock her......she told me that they laugh at her.

She has already missed the first term of school since the schools reopened, so we have planned to enrol her in a new school when the new school year starts in September.

She is such a sweet, shy, caring, gentle lovely young lady who deserves so much more than life has thrown at her so far.
 

If anyone would like to help Angel with her education please contact me.

A Plumber In The Making

This is Mustapha, he was in our sponsorship scheme but had to drop out of school during SSS3 (the penultimate year of basic education) when his father died.

Around the time of the beginning of the Ebola outbreak he came to see me to discuss his plans for the future. He wanted to take a 2 year plumbing course. I know him to be a determined young man who has tried his best to support his family since losing his father, I thought that given the chance this could be a great opportunity for him to gain a skill and lead to good prospects for future employment for him.

I contacted his previous sponsor who, once I explained the situation, agreed to restart his sponsorship to support him through the course.

He is now nearing the end of the first year of his plumbers training and he's doing really well. Every time I see him he's so excited to be doing the course and is eager to show me what he's learning.

 

Once he qualifies he will be the first person in his family with a skilled trade. He is looking forward to being able to support his family.

I'm hoping that we will be able to assist many of our students to learn a skill once their have finished their basic education and really set them on the road to finding paid employment by the time they leave us.

If you would be interested in sponsoring a young adult to learn a trade please let me know.

Life Isn't Easy For 'H'

One of our sponsored girls came to see me a couple of days ago......I'll call her 'H' here.

 

I've been chasing up the students that need to write letters to their sponsors. H came to see me at work and after the usual greetings I told her I needed her to write a letter for her sponsor - she started crying and said she couldn't do it......

 

I know that H hasn't had an easy life, she was abandoned by her mother when she was young and her father isn't really interested in his children - when she lived with her father she had to do all the work in the home and cared for her younger siblings from when she was very young herself.  For the last few years H has been living with her friend's family - but over the past few months she has been made to work for the family more and more. She had to do most of the work in the house as well as go out selling water and when she was in the home they had started to be unkind to her. Her friend's mother had made it clear that she didn't want H living with them anymore, until eventually a couple of weeks ago she threw her out.

 

H had nowhere to go - some nights she was able to stay with a friend, but some nights she had to sleep on the streets.....which is no place for a vulnerable young lady. She was very scared and very lonely. She told me her heart was hurting too much to write to her sponsor. We wracked our brains trying to think of somewhere she could stay - but there was just no-one who could or would take her in. She couldn't stay on the streets - it would only be a matter of time until she was taken advantage of or abused. She is around 20 years old and a sensible young lady, so I told her to find out how much it would cost for her to rent a room.

 

I'm very happy that we were able to rent a room for her and tonight that's where she will be sleeping! I've told her that unfortunately I can't afford to furnish it for her, but she isn't worried about that - she's just happy that she has somewhere safe to stay. Her plan is that when she is settled that she will have her younger sister come to live with her - her sister is currently staying with another family in their area. I hope and pray this will be a new beginning for H, somewhere she can feel safe, take care of her sister, finish her education and have fresh hope for a bright future.

 

I have always been so impressed with H - despite the difficulties she has had she has always valued her education and worked hard. She is an honest, hardworking, decent girl. She has been one of out top scoring students year after year. Next year will be her final year in school and after that she wants to train to be a nurse.

 

It cost me about £52 to rent the room for her for a year......not a huge amount to most people who will read this blog......but a totally unattainable amount to H.

 

H is going to write a letter to her sponsor this weekend......

Boiling Water - 2 Months Later

After 2 Months

The young boy who fell onto a pot of boiling water back in March is back at school!!

Here is a photo of how his back looks now, compare that to how it was before when it first happened and as it was healing:

 

The day after it happened here: Boiling Water

After 12 days here: Update Boiling Water 

After 3 weeks: Boiling Water Burns - Healing Well

 

As the Ebola situation has vastly improved in the country his family decided that he should return to school and he resumed schooling about 3 weeks ago, he's in Class 5 of primary school. He goes to a school less than 10 minutes walking distance from my house so I'm able to keep a close eye on him. He often pops up to my compound at break time with his friends to see if there is any lunch or biscuits going.

 

Thank you everyone who covered him in prayer and positivity.



The Stages of Healing