Directory

Africare

Address

145 Wilkinson Road, Freetown, Sierra Leone

Telephone

(022) 233340

Fax

(022) 235982

E-mail

Website

http://www.africaresl.org

Visited

59

Africare provided emergency humanitarian aid to the innocent victims of civil war in Sierra Leone -- people like Bendu and Sallay -- since 1991, when the violence began.

Aid focused on the Eastern and Southern provinces, at camps where war-displaced people fled. "The camps each contain as many as 30,000 people, huddled in makeshift mud-brick, plastic and thatched huts," reported an Africare field worker.

Africare gave medical aid to mothers, fathers, children, and the elderly, who often arrived at the camps exhausted, malnourished, and ill.

In addition, Africare helped these homeless people -- who were mainly farmers -- to produce subsistence crops in fields near the camps or in villages where, safety permitting, they could return.

All told, several hundred thousand people received medical, food, and agricultural aid from Africare.

* Mobile clinics and clinics at the camps addressed the immediate health problems of the newly displaced. They also ensured reliable care for pregnant women, infants, and young children, and others with special ongoing needs.

* Displaced farm families succeeded in cultivating tens of thousands of acres of rice, groundnuts, cassava, sweet potato, and vegetables. They fed themselves and, in a great accomplishment, they produced small surpluses for sale.

* With Africare's help, village blacksmiths got back on their feet and provided locally appropriate tools at prices farmers could afford.

* Small enterprises run by women, with assistance from Africare, began generating much-needed income and providing broken families -- whose fathers were killed in the war, whose elderly have died, who urgently need to support the traumatized and the maimed -- with a means to provide for themselves.