A Staffordshire woman who takes part in overseas development aid projects has told a Shropshire Rotary club of how child soldiers in Sierra Leone managed to survive the internal war and were now doing good to help vulnerable street children in the West African country.
Sylvia Keris, who has been a volunteer in different African, Asian, Eastern European and South American countries since her early 20’s, was speaking to members of Shrewsbury Severn Rotary Club about the life she personally witnessed in Sierra Leone. She spoke about the transformation of the former child soldiers turned taxi drivers to help street children who would otherwise be in a vulnerable situation such as turning to crime. Through war, Ebola or Aids, many children had become orphaned and her visit to Sierra Leone had seen the offer of rehabilitation and training of young people by the former child soldiers.
She explained the reason for going to the West African country which most people associated with the civil war in the 1990s and the affect that the Ebola outbreak had on children in 2014. “I went because I am passionate about international development,” Sylvia told Rotarians. “I went to build toilets for a school and education is the best way to help people out of poverty. The school had 600 pupils and two toilets. The charity work involved building another block of two. The childrens’ education was disrupted and they were continuously missing part of their lessons. We had to mix cement and make concrete blocks to build a toilet. The builders were working in bare feet with axes. We built an Africa style toilet and a Western style toilet.”
She said the work was hard because everything was done using manual labour with temperatures above 30C and humidity levels exceeding 85%. “We had to raise money to pay for our own accommodation and for the work of the builders. I held raffles and got a grant from the Open University.”
She spoke of the outbreak of Ebola which had spread and hospital staff had to be isolated for months.
Members of the team took along medical supplies to the Hospital, which had run out of medical items, and also supplies to an outreach project helping orphans and street children linked to Ebola and the civil war, called Lifeline Nehemiah. “Whilst Sierra Leone is known for atrocities and Ebola, the children are lovely, the intentions are good and the people are at peace now that the civil war is over. They have drawn a line like time from their reward,” Sylvia added.
