1. PEACE & SECURITY

Background

Whilst guns may have fallen silent in Sierra Leone after the eleven (11) years rebel war, the problem of youth and children engaging in cliques, violence, ghettos, gangs, terrorism, conflicts, armed robbery, social exclusion, alcoholism and misuse of drugs, are still a reality. This opens a new battlefield for the authorities with an assumption of frightening proportions. If not tackled urgently and decisively it may consume a whole generation of our Youth and children.

To solve such issues, we have been working in collaboration with Young Peacebuilders in New York, USA. We are together engaging in intensive peace education and leadership training interventions within Bo City, Sierra Leone. This will reverse the trend towards harmful behavior. We have been reaching out, mobilizing, re-orientating and building the capacity of youth and children in and out of schools by setting them up into peace clubs to educate them on the issues of violence, drug abuse, alcoholism and rudiments of peace, mindfulness, good leadership and non-violence. This emphasis is on the need for them to become effective peacebuilders and leaders who will be fully involved in the process of peace and good leadership promotion in their schools and communities. Currently our peace education project is operating in two schools, United Brethren in Christ Junior Secondary School, which is in Moriba town; and Aladura Junior Secondary School, which is in the Kennedy community in Kakua Chiefdom.

This project has helped to transform most of our young people into effective peacebuilders in their schools and communities. It has further helped in removing some of the roadblocks faced by young people that normally serve as barriers for them to expose their peacebuilding potentials. This builds bridges that strengthen their peacebuilding capacities as they too have been helping to share their peacebuilding experiences derived from the peace club training with their fellow colleagues in schools and communities.

Key Activities:

Our peace education and good leadership project have been using the following strategies in ensuring the realization of our peacebuilding activities:

• Forming young peace clubs in schools, to train club members on managing peer pressure, building self-esteem, negotiation, project management, communication, decision making process and building of good social relations among their peers in preventing violence and enacting peace among peers.
• We nurture environments where young people’s peacebuilding potential is maximized. We do this by developing quality child and youth peacebuilding tools, projects, research, partnerships and together supporting more young peacebuilders and increasing their impact.
• Distribution of non-violent, peace building and effective leadership related materials during our meeting sessions with the peace club members and other means of timely dissemination of information on preventive measures to violence and illegal use of drugs and small arms/light weapon trading.
• Developed research and tools that nurtures peacebuilding passion and skill in children and youth in a context that is impacted to armed conflict, violence, drug abuse, in helping to prevent and end the cycles of violence and drug abuse amongst young people in Kakua Chiefdom, Bo District.
• Identify and share best practices on how children and young peacebuilders can maintain resilience while they continue to exercise their peacebuilding skills and voice on key security issues limiting them to reach their full potentials.
• Partnership: Start and or/strengthen local partnerships to better engage young people as peace builders within Kakua Chiefdom, Bo District.
• Young Peacebuilders clubs: To start Young Peace clubs in schools and communities within Kakua chiefdom with the Young Peacebuilder support and guidance.
• Resources Development: To help identify, pursue, acquire, and manage funds to develop the Young Peacebuilder partnership and peace clubs. Communication: To communicate clearly and consistently with the Young Peacebuilder team abroad and partners locally to ensure efficient, well informed and expanding collaboration.

Background

In Sierra Leone the high rate of youth engagement in violence, armed robbery, bullying, drug abuse and the rate of unemployment is an indicator that youth are not getting the required skills and experience that is imperatively significant in the development of Sierra Leone. For decades, unemployment has been the predominant problem, and it has been supplemented by the worsening labor and political conditions. This is found in forms of involuntary part-time employment, under employment, temporary employment, and employment positions with no social benefit packages. Youth unemployment in Sierra Leone needs urgent attention because it has a great negative implication on our society, such as increased poverty rate, corruption, drug abuse, marginalization, violence, social exclusion etc.

MEYE-SL mitigated the high rate of Youth unemployment by empowering them to serve as active citizens in contributing to strengthening the livelihood of their various communities towards development, building on current assets and helping other fellow citizens to have a successful future. Movement towards Education and Youth Empowerment-Sierra Leone (MEYE-SL) in November, 2016, established a partnership with Planetstartup Entrepreneurship Academy, (a registered international organization in the USA/Florida), to help in synergizing our efforts in mobilizing vulnerable and unemployed youth within Sierra Leone. Youth would then partake in the Planetstartup online entrepreneurship, project management, mentorship training, to help eliminate the problems of youth unemployment within Sierra Leone.

The training programme has been lasting for seven (7) weeks. It is geared towards transforming the mindset of youth participants to change their thinking. Besides new jobs based on emerging technologies, youth need to start thinking about entrepreneurial creativity. This encourages innovation and entrepreneurship. It becomes a top priority for them concerning the potential for jobs creation, and a source of boosting up their self-reliance capacities.

The training has been concentrating on building the knowledge base of youth to accept entrepreneurship as a major job creator. This will create more jobs and allow entrepreneurship to serve as a powerful driver for future economic growth. The result is for a more prosperous and peaceful Sierra Leone. The training programme has been concentrating on topics like leadership in project management, business plan writing, crowdfunding opportunities, strategic operations, business ethics, marketing, innovation and technology, emerging markets and risk analysis, strategic business planning, and corporate social responsibilities.  

Key Activities:

• Mobilized committed youth and women that are willing to acquire entrepreneurship skills training to transform our society economically, through giving them access to online skills training in relation to entrepreneurship, business plan writing, fundraising, marketing, and mentorship.
• To facilitate leadership, entrepreneurship and business skills acquisition/vocational training for women, youth groups, and unemployed youth to enable them to develop socio-economic knowledge in catering, building up resilience to ownership and self-employment to businesses to foster economic growth and reducing the high rate of youth unemployment within Sierra Leone.
• Strengthen youths within Sierra Leone to develop socio-economic knowledge in catering, buildup-resilience to ownership and self-employment to businesses within Sierra Leone.
• Identify and share best practices on how young people can maintain resilience while they continue to exercise their rights and voice on key security and developmental priorities limiting them to reach their full potentials.

Background

Education is a basic human right that helps boys and girls reach their full potential in every society. Thousands of children in Sierra Leone continue to stay out of school. MEYE-SL is a charity that works at grass root level in Sierra Leone, promoting education for orphans, disadvantaged children and youth to increase self-sufficiency and long-term sustainability and further embarking on projects that empower youth and children to step up as leaders in their communities.

The organization in 2017 started supporting ten (10) vulnerable children with school fees, school uniforms, shoes, bags, notebooks, textbooks, pens, and pencils to help aid their learning process. The organization have further been involved in advocating and motivating parents on the importance of early childhood education more especially the girl’s child within the Kori Chiefdom, Moyamba District. This has helped to ignite much interest amongst many vulnerable children and parents within the chiefdom. It has further helped most of the vulnerable children to learn how to prevent illness and improve overall health, build, and maintain infrastructure, manage personal and professional relationships, understand, and advocate for basic rights, and secure their livelihoods.

We promote education and develop skills that improve literacy, health and welfare for long term self-sufficiency, and improve the livelihoods of vulnerable children to uplift them from poverty. We achieve these objectives by providing educational and skills training for the poorest children in the community. Only by helping people to help themselves can we hope to improve livelihoods and encourage long term self-reliance and sustainability, and this will be achieved through education and skills training; by providing the right skills to empower people and increase opportunities of employment and self-reliance. Our educational sponsorship programme increased the number of vulnerable children going to school in realizing their dreams of going to university, to help to arm them with the courage and self-confidence to better themselves, families, communities, and ultimately their next generation.

MEYE-SL has been working in synergy with community stakeholders, schools and parents in Kori Chiefdom, Moyamba District. The goal is to further engage in raising awareness of the need for early childhood education and helping to reinforce the rights of children affected by violence, neglect, and social exclusion with an opportunity to access quality education. This has been very important in achieving the vision of the organization, because when children are educated, they are armed with the courage and self-confidence to better themselves, families, communities, and ultimately their next generation.

Key Activities:

• To visit lower and high schools, to mobilize and motivate school going children within six communities in Kori chiefdom and setup educative social and health clubs that help to change of attitude effectively and efficiently towards quality learning outcome among young people in Kori Chiefdom, Moyamba District
• To mentor and coach children and youth on leadership roles and transformation, this enables the children and youth to develop solutions for desirable social change in our community.
• To advocate and motivate parents on the importance of early childhood education more especially the girl’s child within the Kori Chiefdom, Moyamba District.
• Guide rural parents/guardians to participate in initiative by making products for sale locally, and thus get to make additional income, moving from helplessness to truly striving communities that are self-reliant.

Facilitate support for vulnerable children across six underprivileged rural communities in the Kori Chiefdom, through support with learning materials like uniforms, bags, shoe, books, pens, pencils etc. in helping to aid their learning process

Background

We respect and reinforce children’s rights and work towards a world where every less privileged child will have equal opportunities to access quality education so they can escape from poverty and fulfill their dreams. As an organization we are engaged in helping to improve access and the right of the less privileged

 children to attain quality education through the provision of school materials to aid their learning process and help in spreading awareness, motivate parents and beneficiaries in targeted locations on the importance of education, facilitating and supporting the model of child friendly education atmosphere. This helps create interest amongst vulnerable children towards formal education. Our child protection approach could be described as the measures/mechanisms that are in place to prevent and respond to abuse, exploitation, neglect, and all forms of violence against children.

Key Activities:

1. Advocate and share best practices on how children and teenage girls can maintain resilience while they continue to exercise their rights and voice on key security and developmental priorities limiting them to reach their full potentials.
2. Work in partnership with the Ministry of Social Welfare Children and Gender Affairs to protect the welfare of children and report abuse on children’s issues in Southern Province.
3. To provide transformative education, especially for boys and girls encountering orphaning, violence, neglect, social exclusion, and disabilities etc.
4. Setting up a kid’s club in schools, we take the kids club through a series of training on life skills, by simply building their knowledge base on good societal values, behaviors, culture, and good characters that are accepted in societies we live in. The lives skills trainings concentrate on five core acceptance skills like:

• Critical thinking in answering questions and solving problems.
• Communication, i.e., public speaking, drawing, writing.
• Relationship caring, concern, compassion, empathy
• Emotional management i.e., self-control, self-esteem.
• Social responsibility i.e., desires to contribute to and improve society.

1. Organized radio discussions programme on child protection issues in Sierra Leone.