Christmas in Sierra Leone is typically a fun-filled affair. With music, parties, and vibrant atmosphere, the cities, towns and villages are a buzz of excitement. This year was somewhat different; with a strict restriction on public gatherings imposed at the beginning of the Ebola outbreak, it has been a muted festive season. Just before Christmas…

“Not everybody who sees this will realise just how hard it might be to secure such a letter.” The letter in question is the Certificate of Authorisation in Port Loko. In this post we’re going to try and give you an insight in to how important this single piece of paper is for our ambitions…

Sillah, sitting in the middle, with two of his new EducAid friends. He is 14 years old and attended Christ The King School in Bo before Ebola struck. At the beginning of the summer holidays, Sillah travelled from his school in Bo to Moyamba Junction, about an hour and a half journey South East by…

 Mohamed Anthony Kamara, and ex-EducAid student and current EducAid staff. Last week I was speaking with one of the site coordinators, Alhaji Kamara, better know to those in EducAid as AA. I asked him whether there were many Ebola survivors close to the EducAid compound, and if there were any that he thought would be…

Sierra Leone is facing a worsening Ebola crisis day by day. Whilst it’s neighbours begin to seize control over the vicious and deadly virus, Sierra Leone’s number of Ebola cases continues to spiral higher and higher. Despite the sluggish start to the international response, it is now not the volume of aid that is impeding…

I stumbled across an article from 2008 while researching another blog post. Reading it made me sit, stop, and really consider the impact of what EducAid does. During the course of the year or so that I have been involved with the charity I have been told about the impact of the civil war on…

Donald Whenzle is another member of the EducAid community that has had to grapple with the ferocious Ebola virus. Donald grew up in Waterloo, attending both Primary and Junior Secondary school there before joining EducAid to finish his Senior Secondary studies. He was shocked on his arrival because of the vast differences in teaching methods. His previous…

The picture that we painted nearly a month ago in Kigbal was not one full of promise. Coinciding with a BBC News journalist, Miriam visited a small village called Kigbal, 4 hours northeast of the capital, Freetown. The BBC Journalist, Andrew Harding, described the scene like this: “A smooth tarmac road runs through the middle…

Last week we outlined the need for the 3rd phase of our fight in this Ebola outbreak. This week we are taking a huge step towards implementing an effective and progressive programme for life after Ebola. There are huge numbers of children, the most vulnerable members of society, being orphaned by the vicious Ebola virus.…

West Africa has faced the worst medical crisis of a generation. Sierra Leone, a country devastated by a decade long civil war only 13 years ago, now faces a humanitarian crisis of dreadful proportions. Ebola has created a divisions within our society: discontent with the domestic and international reaction to the outbreak; stigmatised sufferers and…

At the beginning of this blog, we set out our 3 stage plan to combat the effects of Ebola on our students, staff, and the wider population as a whole. The first of these phases was to implement protocols to protect our sites from any potential Ebola threat. Now deep in to the worst Ebola…

We’ve had a few requests from people who wanted to receive inboxed updates from our blog, so we’ve decided to give you a quick guide to keeping up-to-date with our blog and social media. Sign up to our blog to receive our posts in your inbox You can do this from any of the pages…

AJ (pictured) & Kai are the site coordinators at EducAid Magbeni, one of the EducAid schools in the most hard-hit areas of Sierra Leone, the Port Loko district. AJ and Kai are responsible for looking after the students and staff at our school, and for ensuring that security, welfare and morale are being kept at…

As the global media attention begins to tire and to sway on to other more sensational stories, it would be easy for the public to think that Ebola situation has gotten better. Let us be clear, it has not. Have you seen the BBC piece on Kigbal, a small town 4 hours north of Freetown?…

Pirez is a man who has come all the way through the EducAid system, and someone that typifies everything that we stand for. We asked him a few questions to give us an overview of what life is really like on the ground in Sierra Leone, from someone who is fighting the battle every day.…

Necessity is the mother of invention – we can see this proverb come to reality during times of crisis, particularly in the actions and initiatives that come from the NGO and Aid communities. A few weeks ago, the West African Medical Mission (WAMM) took in some of our students to be trained in a variety…

‘Safe and dignified burials’ have been a top priority of the international and government agencies of the past months; with more reports of insensitivity by government burial teams – a lack of clarity as to grave locations, and a lack of religious formality to ceremonies – it is becoming a point of contention at both…

Distrust and misinformation have been prominent throughout the Ebola outbreak, and something that we have touched on in previous blog posts. Distrust for the government and international community, and a lack of clear information about the sources, the transmission, and the care for Ebola. It can be difficult for an outsider to fully understand the…