Canadian aid helps Sierra Leone’s women, disabled

Canadian Christian and Catholic charitable
organizations like CAUSE Canada and Development and Peace – Caritas Canada are
seeing fruits from their efforts to support women and people living with
disabilities in Sierra Leone.

The resilient West African nation has faced pervasive poverty, strains on health care and
lingering social and political tensions from an 11-year civil war that ended in
2002.

CAUSE Canada, a Christian organization based
in Calgary, is guided by a mission to endow women and girls with opportunities
to achieve their potential through access
to education in the northern Koinadugu District.

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According to the 2024 Sierra Leone census,
the literacy rate in Koinadugu is 21 per cent — appreciably lower than the 39-per-cent national rate. Comparatively, the national literacy rate for women is
29 per cent, compared with 49 per cent for men.

The CAUSE Canada approach to making a
difference on this important issue is providing early childhood development
programs and supports needed to help girls successfully complete their
secondary education, such as after-school programs, library access, learning
clubs and other academic support initiatives.

Girls’ education prospects in
Sierra Leone have been historically derailed by pressure exerted on them to
drop out of school to become a wife and mother as a child. An 11-month campaign called “‘Mi Small Wef”’ No More
(“My Little Wife” No More)” in 2020-21 in
Koinadugu and Falaba spawned a “92-95-per-cent reduction in child marriage
rates.”

Another important pillar of CAUSE Canada’s
work in Sierra Leone — and other areas of Central and West Africa — is its
microfinance program that provides impoverished and marginalized women with
small loans and business training to help aspiring female entrepreneurs grow
their business.

“Women have so much to give and so much to
share,” said Wendy Fehr, CAUSE Canada’s executive director. “When you invest in
a woman, you are really helping the family and community to leave poverty… When you are investing in a mother you are
investing in her whole family. We know that the children that
she brings up, if she has some education, will be healthier. If she has some
money and economic opportunity, it is far more likely that her kids will go to
school.”

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Canadian women sent love, admiration and
solidarity to the entrepreneurial women of Sierra Leone this past Mother’s Day.
 The latter received gift boxes with Canadian-sourced chocolates, skincare
botanicals, hand-poured candles, textiles and more.

Development and Peace – Caritas Canada, the
official development organization of the Canadian Church,
is also hard at work in Sierra Leone on behalf of people living with
disabilities.

Camilo Coral, DPCC’s programs manager in
Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Nigeria, told The Catholic Register the number
of people in Sierra Leone living with permanent disabilities because of the
2013-16 Ebola virus epidemic is over 4,000 people, and there are well over
27,000 Sierra Leoneans with long-term infirmities begot by the civil war.
Overall estimates place the number of people with disabilities at over 450,000.

Discussions with local partners on the
ground, such as the Bombali District Coalition on Disability, helped DPCC arrive at the conclusion that instead of providing temporary aids such as
crutches and wheelchairs, a more significant impact could be made in providing
support in implementing the country’s “The Persons with Disability Act,” passed
in 2011.

“Essentially that is what happened with the
Bombali District Coalition on Disability,” said Coral. “We started a process to
train them on leadership, policy analysis and campaign planning, mostly at
community and district level. Once they completed their training, they began
practising their acquired skills. When I say practice, it’s, let’s say, meeting
with local representatives asking about the implementation of the law, being
very specific about situations, for example, in terms of health or education or
economic programs that were designed for them.”

The second phase of the project was helping
assist in improving coordination between among the various organizations that
serve people with disabilities. Groups did come together to conduct a survey of
how the law is being implemented in the education, health, trades and economic
sectors.

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One noteworthy difference spawned by this
work is that blind and deaf kids were given the material they needed to succeed
in the classroom.

“Moms are very emotional, recounting how they
are happy that their blind kids can go to school because now in the school
there are available Braille textbooks, for example,” said Coral.