About the area

Sierra Leone is an extremely poor, highly indebted and low human development country in Sub Sahara Africa. This is caused by both old and new local and global disasters inflicted on the area where 60% of the citizens live in absolute poverty. Their only concern is how they will eat that day, as many factors affect the supply distribution chain and many suffer from malnutrition.

In my 2015 activist days I met a colleague on FB who worked for an NGO in Sierra Leone named Gaspard. Over the years I learned a lot about how blatantly corrupt their government was when I thought ours was bad. Theirs is so bad that in the last election they were bombing the opposition party offices in Bo where he lived and caused him to fear for his life.

These projects take place in the Southern and Eastern Provinces where Bo is the hub city and where external factors have devastated the land and killed many parents. For decades they have been bombarded with such hardships as years of civil war, the Ebola virus, the Ukraine war, COVID and extremely corrupt politicians who take money from the top of any global charity organization that sends it. In short, they have been de-humanized by their own government and left to fend for themselves. In some places they must turn to prostitution just to eat in a day and many will work all day just for one meal.

The difficulties in working with people in an impoverished region were mostly based on cultural differences that caused some communicative misunderstandings. Not only that, there is so much corruption, it’s hard for the people themselves to rise up, as they are limited to a very base survival mode. It’s as if they’re locked in a time warp of impoverishment from eras past and that is likely been handed down through ancestral ties. Some of the youth are changing this through technology, but it’s slow going and the corrupt governments and exploitative corporations are still an oppressive force.

My part in both of these projects was to provide funding and consultation as well as maintain the documents in the shared Google Drive. I’m a huge advocate for self-sustainability so that we rely less on the government institutions for financial or health support. The purpose was to help these villages rise up from poverty status and the way the people came together was surprising, amazing and inspiring.

2023 Rice Field for Jojoima

The second of these projects took place in Jojoima, which is 62 miles east of Bo in the Eastern Province. It’s a bigger village of about 3,000 people with 40% being under the age of 15, 90% Islam and 10% Christian faiths. What began as a plantation rehabilitation project turned into rice cultivation after consulting with an agricultural advisor.

Work started with land preparation at the end of May 2023 and ended with the harvest in December. I learned of the matter when Gaspard approached me to represent him in an application for funding in order to rehabilitate his plantation. It had been devastated by the wars and everything else that ravaged their country and he had left it to live in Bo, so it was in much disrepair. The application didn’t go through, so I offered to pay for the project.

His family owns a 16-acre plantation of cash crops with cocoa, coffee, oil palm and citrus that they had developed over 15 years and was now left in ruin. It had been a huge factor in self-sustenance for the entire village as well as the family, but most of the family left for higher pursuits.

This time there were 25 workers with a project cost of $1289.00CA and I created a Fundrazr page where I made most of the contributions myself. It was more for awareness and posterity than fundraising, as this model can be replicated in many villages, as was the point.

Another difference is it was just the two of us communicating and Gaspard also started his own NGO company to help his town’s people learn skills throughout this project. I was much more apprised on the events with many photos during the every stage and what was done after the harvest. I was also surprised to learn how environmentally conscientious and knowledgeable they are with their farming practices.

The entire project from start to finish is recorded here on Funrazr so the world can see that hope is not lost; it just needs the right people.

https://fundrazr.com/cropsforjojoima

A wonderful model for the world

What was meant to be a model for other villages to replicate in helping them grow in self-sustenance goes far beyond how to make a rice seed ball. This is humanitarianism at its finest under the most dire of circumstances and proves how much can truly be done with just a little bit of money and good management. This village was in fact revitalized and I’m proud to have played a part in that most noble and inspiriting event.

2021 Community Garden for Kakama

The first of these projects started in April 2021 when a FB group friend of ours whom I’ll call S asked me to fund an orphanage in Kakama for $30K, which was a ridiculous notion from the start. It wasn’t hard to say no to that request, but then I got curious about what actually could be done. Kakama is small village 32 miles south of Bo with a population of about 700. The roads are very bad to drive on because of all the potholes so most people use motorbikes to get around.

I had to trust my instincts around this, because I didn’t know S except through a group page so I was very skeptical, and rightly so. In my ponderings I decided to contacted Gaspard and ask if he could travel there to do some investigating for me. He would act as a go-between with his eyes on the ground and report back to me with the facts, one of which is this is a typical African community.

• The people live in extended family settings in support of each other, so the idea of an orphanage is obsolete.
• The level of poverty is clearly deep and wide in all its forms.
• Historical records indicate that NGOs and government agencies have invested here, but there’s no evidence of that.
• The men, women, children and even the community leaders are all extremely poor.

Closing the profiteering gap

I knew there was a very wide gap between the needs of the people and the global charities and that gap is called government. Donors give billions of dollars to organized charities who then give to the government, but what the people actually get keeps them impoverished.

The important distinction here is that I wanted to see how much it really cost to rehabilitate this small village to make it self-sustaining. It was decided to clear a 10-acre patch of land near the village to plant groundnut, corn and peppers and this is what it took.

• I was the benefactor and project manager
• Gaspard was the overseer and managed the funds, investigated the precise needs as well as discussing with the locals how to best proceed
• S was the liaison between the people, sourcing tools and gathering workers on site

Gaspard and S both lived in Bo and had to travel the rough roads, except when S stayed in the village and brought the people together for the project. Together they sourced the tools, seedlings, transport for materials and food for the workers along with providing an expense report.

To start a farm it was really quite simple, as they had a plot of land and a community well. It took 120 people to clear and burn the brush with machetes to ready the ground for planting. This project started at the end of May and finished at the end of June, so there was a lot of activity by all involved. They are clearly very hard workers.

The financial cost breakdown of $1,093CA (8,489,702SLL) covered.

• 20 machete
• 10 axe head
• 50 digging hoe
• 30 planting hoe
• 600 groundnut
• 50 corn
• 39 pepper
• Food for 120 workers for one month
• Transportation for Gaspard & S

By all accounts this project was a success and the women tend to the garden today, so it was money well spent even though I’m anonymous to the village folk. Happily, I did get the answers I sought and now know what it takes to help raise a village up from poverty: help them be self-sustaining with a farm.

Not all the people were happy about this project, but the ones who were involved were very eager and thankful to be doing something for themselves. They had a chant that all the workers and kids chanted in a video that S sent to me, “We are ready for the work”. I won’t publicly post videos where there are children in them, so I can’t show it here, but it’s wonderful to see how close they all are when it comes to community spirit.