UPDATED: An enlightening insight into Street Child's indispensable impact on transforming education for the most vulnerable 

What an extraordinary week! Thank you so much for such generosity in supporting Street Child's vital work in Sierra Leone. We are impressed by the tremendous effect that Street Child have amongst these resilient people in this beautiful country. 

Street Child go to the most difficult places to support the most vulnerable, and are there during crises when no other NGO is. They started here, in Sierra Leone, during the last few years of the 1991-2002 war and still today support the victims of this most brutal conflict. They were here during the Ebola crisis and supported back into education 12,000 orphans of this tragedy. 

We've spent the past four days with Street Child immersed in observing, learning and understanding the work they are doing. As well as building and renovating school infrastructure, supplying books/materials to schools, Street Child take a holistic grassroots approach to building a powerful sustainable model.Through this approach, Street Child address the barriers to education, most importantly extreme poverty and poor quality of teaching

Street Child have developed more effective interactive educational frameworks, a highlight being TARL "teaching at the right level". This 'circle on a tarpaulin mat' work acknowledges that children are at various levels of education not dependent on age as many have been out of school for long periods of time. 

Street Child recognises that the economic challenges need to be addressed in a sustainable way and so offer small business grants to families to enable them to support their children in school and pay their school teachers. 

We really appreciate having had this insight, many thanks again for donations already made and are grateful for those donations still to come. 

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Travelling to Sierra Leone to support Street Child's work

We are really grateful to have this opportunity to visit Street Child projects in the villages and schools of Makeni, Sierra Leone. It will be an incredible learning experience for the whole family to get an insight into the excellent work that Street Child does. Tom Dannatt founded Street Child in 2008, supporting 100 children into education. It was the poorest country in the world. To understand the poverty there and the enormous disparities in our world, the historical legacies are critical - historical legacies from which we benefit. 

Every little difference  made through a dedicated organisation like street child is valuable. Street Child now supports 707,000  children in education and 83,000 families through business grants, so that they can create a stable living and learning environment for their children.

In 2019, the organisation,  Lessons for Life -  the legacy of our friend Shane O Neill, Liberty Global, partnered with Street Child to create an even stronger impact. The achievements are impressive. 

"Educating children" and "Empowering families" through working with local NGO's, to create a response targeted to a specific situation is key to the efficacy of their work. Their strategy facilitates capability of immediate response to crises such as with Ukraine, whilst simultaneously continuing their longstanding work in Afghanistan despite the Taliban takeover, under which many NGO's could no longer operate. Core to their ethos is elucidating crises often forgotten, such as is evident in their work with the Rohingya refugees, where 80% of the children are out of school. Street Child are involved in 17 countries, 12 in Africa. The challenges are enormous - statistics are staggering  - one in 10 children globally is out of school.

This annual fundraising event of the marathon in Sierra Leone, in which all 8 of us in the family will participate (partially!), creates awareness of the critical  work of Street Child. The participants get a chance to visit the projects over a few days and highlight the vital work done and to be done. £30 allows a child one year at school; £60 provides a mother with a small business grant; £300 trains a teacher.

We would  really appreciate  any donation to this extremely impressive organisation.

Thank you so much.

Gary, Marlene, Conor, Ciara, Carla, Calum, Carine, Cliona