The World Bank identifies “orphans and vulnerable children” as a group requiring special consideration and intervention to protect them from a high likelihood of “negative outcomes.” These children “are more exposed to risks than their peers” and “most likely to fall through the cracks of regular programs.” These are the children that experience “loss of…

Back in April we wrote about the ladies from District 9 of the Inner Wheels Club. They had hand-made over 400 sleeping bags that eventually contributed to the largest shipment of donations that we’ve ever sent to Sierra Leone. This is what I wrote at the time: “Great fun was had by the ladies from…

Lloyd Igunbor – one of Miriam’s past students from Salesian College, Battersea – has spent the past couple of months organising and packing a container full of donations destined for Freetown. He has been travelling around the country picking up donated items from collection centres – usually friends and family of the charity – in…

Members of the 820 Naval Air Squadron invited Miriam Mason-Sesay to their Operational Medal Ceremony at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose last week. Not only were Miriam and her son, Kofi, in attendance, but Miriam was invited to present the medals to the serving officers. The 820 Squadron had been deployed on the RFA Argus…

This month, Miriam Mason-Sesay was bestowed an honour that few are worthy of. The World of Children award is an extremely prestigious and unique organisation that scours the plantet each year for the most effective change-makers for children worldwide, thus improving the lives of the most vulnerable. The World of Children describes itself as an…

Let’s keep focused! Multiple, multiple changes to the academic year have had extraordinary knock on consequences for Sierra Leone’s children.  To start with, during the whole Ebola crisis, students missed 8 months of schooling. This, in a country where academic standards tend to be horrendously low and education is itself already in crisis and has…

   Hello, I’m Lucy! This year I am Mellor Rose-Queen. The tradition of crowning a young girl as Rose Queen developed in the farming communities of Northern England as part of the celebration of and thanksgiving for the growth of the food crops. Today, in Mellor, this tradition continues but the role of the Rose Queen and her team…

Opportunity, chance, and fortune can play such a big part in Sierra Leone sometimes. The proximity of absolute poverty to daily life means that only the smallest bump in the road can lead to genuinely terrible consequences. Musa Koroma, on leaving Bo School due to unpaid school fees, faced a bleak future that so many…

Yesterday, Liberia became the first of the three countries at the centre of the Ebola outbreak to have been declared free from the virus, after 42 days of no new cases. In response to the WHO announcement, the government encouraged the country to have a day of celebration, as can be seen in the photos.…

The Guardian website published a video last week covering some of the difficulties that Sierra Leonean students were facing when returning back to school. Fortunately, a student at EducAid highlighted just why our value-based fees our so important. As is common throughout all national schools, students are required to pay school fees, buy school uniforms,…

Wednesday night, a crack team of EducAid trustees, staff, donors, and volunteers travelled to Manchester Cathedral to meet over 100 businessmen and women from all around the City. Resonate is a 3rd Sector recruitment company, and they had invited us all there to launch their new business-to-charity skills platform that would facilitate the private sector…

The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), a special consultant to the UN Economic and Social Council, has issued a warning in the wake of the contentious, and potentially unconstitutional, sacking of the Vice President of Sierra Leone, Alhaji Sam-Sumana. There are various factors at play, but the most threatening and sticky claim made against…

Schools are open, but attendance is low. There are several things affecting the cautious and slow return to school for Sierra Leone’s youngsters. Roeland Monasch, Unicef’s Sierra Leone representative, who described the reopening of the country’s 8,000 schools as “a major step in the normalisation of life”, but Alison Schafer, World Vision’s mental health and…

With new Ebola cases having steadied at around 1-2 per day, the President, Ernest Bai Koroma, and the Ministry of Education have decided that it is now time to re-open schools in Sierra Leone. Whilst this is a huge morale boost for the nation, and a significant step forwards, we are still facing a very…

One cornerstone of our mission, and something that EducAid has always been immensely proud of, is being an intrinsically Sierra Leonean organisation, and being cemented in the centre of our communities. From the very inception of the charity we committed to establishing our roots in Sierra Leone – not to fall in to the trap…