Wish List

What do we need to start the girls' safe house?

Maronka Girls Wish List

Miriam Tholley - future resident of the Maronka Girls' Safe House

How long is a piece of string?

What would we like to have in place to start the girls' safe house?  Well now, that is a different question all together!

Of course, a lot can be done with basics but why settle down if we can settle up? Why not do as much of what we would do for our own daughters and loved ones as we can for these little ones?

If you would like to buy something to help make the environment more attractive for the girls, to provide fun and stimulating reading material or maybe equipment for creative or sporting activities please have a look at our Maronka Girls Wish List.  You can contact Ann (btwoman@hotmail.co.uk) so you can send your gift to her house and she will bring it with her when she comes to Sierra Leone.

Maronka Girls Wish List

If you would like to know more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, please go to www.educaid.org.uk and www.educaidsierraleone.blogspot.com

Building progressing

Looking down from above the village, at the Girls' House with its roof woodwork going on.

The building is progressing nicely.
There is still a lot of work to be done: the roof, the flooring, the doors and windows but everything is on schedule for a September start with Ann and the girls.

Looking up from the village at the Girls' House when the beams and pillars were being finished.

If you are interested in knowing more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, please go to www.educaid.org.uk and www.educaidsierraleone.blogspot.com

Wow, what beautiful pillowcases

Imagine a world where every girl had at least one dress!

This is how their website opens.

www.dressagirlaroundtheworld.com is an organisation with a non denominational Christian foundation with the aim of giving a little bit of value and feeling special and pretty to as many little girls around the world as it can.  They sew pillowcases into dresses.  When I went on the website this evening, they had delivered 31,804 dresses in 47 countries.

Now, Esther's craft group has joined the ranks of sewing enthusiasts and they are producing beautiful dresses for the girls in Maronka.

It is one of the things that sticks in my mind from when I first went to Maronka, 11 years ago: there were three houses and the children were rag poor.  If a kid had pants, he didn't have a T-shirt and those who had a top did not have knickers and a good proportion of the smaller ones had neither.

Over the years, with the ending of the war, the coming of the school and various donations, things have looked up.  Now, most children would have a pair of flip flops [often worn right through underneath but....present] and a handful of clothes even if they don't fit properly and often have great holes in them.  However, pretty things that are the personal property of an individual are very rare events!

This is a lovely project and we are greatly appreciative of Esther and her team!

Thank you all.

If you are interested in knowing more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans please go to www.educaidsierraleone.blogspot.com and www.educaid.org.uk.

First volunteer - Ann Beatty

We are very very fortunate to have got a fantastic first volunteer to go and start the safe house.  Ann Beatty will move out to Sierra Leone for six months in September to run the project with the first set of girls.  Ann is already in action.  Not only is she madly drumming up support for the cause and researching all possible interventions and activites, she has also lined up her successor.

Ann Beatty - getting ready to head out to Maronka

Ann Beatty is a long-standing friend of EducAid's and indeed of Maronka's.  She first visited Sierra Leone in 2007.  When Ann first visited Maronka, this was the drinking water source!

Ann has a heart of gold and she is also a dynamic and 'go get' sort of person.  She organised friends and colleagues into collecting the necessary to dig a well.  Now this is the drinking water source!

Newly dug and capped well with a pump in early 2009, providing safe water for the school and all the village. 

What an amazing role model for the girls.

Good luck Ann in all your preparations.  The team is excited to have you at the helm.

If you are interested in knowing more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young people, please go to www.educaid.org.uk or www.educaidsierraleone.blogspot.com

A bit more about the Sierra Leonean context.....

EducAid's Girl Power Group and the new Gender Equality Laws

Have a quick look at this youtube clip.

If you are interested in knowing about EducAid's work with vulnerable young people, please go to www.educaid.org.uk and www.educaidsierraleone.blogspot.com

What is this about?

Girls Safe House

Maronka

·       A home where respect, beauty, affection, order and love are the norm.

·       A home where the little girls that attend EducAid Maronka Primary School can live.

·       A home where girls are safe: mentally, emotionally and physically.

·       A home where girls can learn to be women: strong, competent and confident women able to take their place in the building of 21^st century Sierra Leonean society.

The context

Sierra Leone ranks 100 out 102 on the Social Institutions Gender Index [SIGI] because of statistics like:

·        47 per cent of girls between 15 and 19 years of age are married, divorced or widowed.

·        Between 80 and 90 per cent of women are circumcised.

·        77 per cent of Sierra Leonean women think that gift marriage is acceptable.

·        9.5 per cent of women [20.4 per cent of men] have secondary education or above.

The above statistics add up to an environment where it is extremely hard for any girl to achieve her full potential in any aspect of life and thus overall as a woman.

There is little or nothing in the life of an average little Sierra Leonean girl to make her feel of value.

The aim

The purpose of the Girls Safe House in Maronka is to provide a home in which girls who would otherwise be vulnerable to a wide variety of emotional, mental and physical threats, can grow up strong in spirit, mind and body so they can live their lives to the full and contribute fully to society.

Specifically, who will live in the safe house?

Maronka is a tiny village of approximately 20 adults, 2 miles from Port Loko in the north of Sierra Leone.

EducAid has a small primary school in Maronka of 180 children, of which 30 + stay in the village but are not originally from there.  15 of them are girls.  There are also a number of girls who walk long distances to come to school each day from the surrounding area.

This home will accommodate the 15 little girls who currently live scattered across the village, many of the village girls themselves and will provide the opportunity for many others from distant villages to stay at least during the week.

Little girls like:

Isatu, who we found living on the beach and hungry.  She had run away from a difficult and very deprived home situation and had never been to school.  She had learned to survive on the streets and some of her habits were not great.  Now, she is catching up at school and is a much-loved member of the village community – a changed young woman on the way to being somebody.

Mariama was kitchen skivvy to a family in Freetown; a difficult little miss who did the opposite of everything she was asked to do and got herself a regular beating as a result.  Taken to Maronka to start school, at long last, she is now a delightful little girl responding to love far better than she ever did to violence.  She is nearly always top of her class.

Binta was left to bring herself up at 2 when her mother was sent to prison.  She has clearly been seriously neglected for the best part of her little life.  She had a heart-breaking habit of throwing herself into the arms of all visitors, seeking a bit of love and attention.  She speaks now, though, and is starting to hold her own with her new playmates.

If you are interested in knowing more about EducAid's work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, please go to www.educaid.org.uk or www.educaidsierraleone.blogspot.com