Helping People Help Myself

It was my first time to visit in West Africa, and of course, Sierra Leone, a country suffered a decade war till 2003 due to economic interests in mining, especially diamond. The film, "Blood Diamond" probably made the country well-known in the world. Still my knowledge about the country was limited to the always-low-ranking in human development index published by UNDP. Tons of documents from my colleagues gave a lot of information and good understanding of the country particularly in agriculture sector. The field trip in districts of the country, nevertheless, inspired me more than anything. I'm convinced that Sierra Leone has a vast potential of agricultural production and growth, which will surely push up the country's development ranking because increased income for farmers (i.e. mostly poor families) support health and education of their family members, especially children. The increased production of agricultural products will lower the food price and increase income for the country by trade. (Sierra Leone imports a lot of rice which accounts for almost 20% of its import value).

However, at this moment, many children have to work on streets.
This girl in Kenema district, probably age of 8-10 was selling the grilled corn in a small market. Not because of charity, I had to buy them on the way to fill my too empty stomach. The corn was so tasty!
A group of kids (picture shown below) told me "no school more play" but they do need schools. Eventually, we drove more than 1700km in 4 days covering 5 districts from far east, north (till the boarder to Guinea), central and south. The story and project details will be shared in the next post.