What's on This Home Page
Welcome to the SLPP
à
About Sierra Leone
--A Brief History
à
Focus on
Fundraising:
click
here or scroll down.
Goals of the SLPP Coalition:
The Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership has
three goals:
(1) To raise
money from a variety of wider Twin Cities sources for
housing, education, health, and other welfare that will help villagers become
more able to work and be more productive in their farming economy and related
activities using the U.N. "Millennium Villages model.
(2) To bring together volunteer traveler-workers for
regular trips to the three nearby villages of Foindu, Jokibu, and Pujehun to
live with villagers, work with their committees to help them, and
experience a Third-World country that the UN considers the second poorest in
the world.
(3) To consider and provide other long-term aid that will help give the
villages what well-respected Third-World economist Jeffrey Sachs calls the first rung
up on the ladder of economic development so that they may eventually become
self-sustaining and serve as an example to their district and country.

Web
Sites Especially for People
Going to Sierra Leone:
(These sites also are among the many you can find on the
Webs-Books-Films page.)
(1) Sierra Leone - The CIA World Factbook: www.cia.gov/cia/
publications/factbook/geos/
sl.html
(2) Most Recent and Best Statistics by U.S. Department of State:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/
bgn/5475.htm
(3) Health Information for Travelers to Countries in West Africa, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
www.cdc.gov/travel/
wafrica.htm#country
(4) New
York Times Travel Article
tells it like it is in Sierra Leone.
(5) Please also see the
Webs-Books-Films page.
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HOME PAGE
April-June Sierra Leone Gallery
Showings of Pictures!
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Welcome to the Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership, or "SLPP"!
SLPP is a long-term, independent partnership
between Sierra Leone and Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. The
"SLPP" was created in spring 2005 by former Peace Corps
volunteer
Jeff Hall as a way for a group of people to become aware of conditions in Africa and to
offer specific, dynamic forms of help. Jeff lived in the Sierra Leonean
village of Jokibu for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1990s,
and he has returned several times in recent years and now leads a yearly group
trip to Jokibu and its two sister villages Foindu and Pujehun.
Sierra Leone itself is a small, coastal, West African country
between Guinea and Liberia. Its capital, Freetown, once was a major slave
trading port for the Americas and also became a major center for the
repatriation of slaves. The village of Jokibu, near Sierra Leone’s eastern
border, was devastated during the region’s 1990s civil conflicts, its buildings
abandoned and destroyed, and its residents scattered to the jungle. Now
that the civil conflict has been over for several years, many of the residents
have returned to Jokibu and two nearby, sister villages. It is these three
villages upon which the SLPP is concentrating.
Jeff is coordinating the Partnership and SLPP Committee. His close
friendships both with villagers and with the owners of a
building-supply store in the nearby town of Kenema make it
possible for him to personally and directly order goods, transfer money, and keep
accurate, detailed accounting and installation records, including photographs.
Every penny contributed goes directly to aid for the village.
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This family is
standing in front of two houses with different roofs: one is the new, much
more permanent sheet-metal roofing supplied by SLPP; the other is the old
canvas roofing that wears out quickly, allowing water to leak and destroy
the house's walls. SLPP has supplied roofs to over 500 homes in the
three eastern Sierra Leone villages of Foindu, Jokibu, and Pujehun.
These three villages were overrun several times by rebels during the
"blood diamonds" civil war in the 1990s. They were almost completely
destroyed, and most villagers fled to refugee camps, only to return and
rebuild in 2003-4. The entire country is a peaceful and successful
democracy, now. |
Focus on Fundraising
Educational Excellence
Goal: $20,000 for
Scholarships
+
School Supplies
The Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership
(SLPP) had another group trip to our three villages in May. On the trip, we
saw our funds at work on the essential school addition and several clean
water wells.
As a new school year approaches, we
are reminded that thousands of our young African village friends thirst for
education. On village visits, students remind us repeatedly how desperate
they are for books, school fees, uniforms, paper and pencils. Many students
lost a parent or two during the war, so they have little support. We see
devoted teachers working diligently to help kids without the help of chalk,
erasers, paper, desks and chairs.
SLPP is committed to educational
excellence in the villages because knowledge is what brings hope for a
brighter tomorrow. We want to invest aggressively so that 1) our three
village primary schools become models for other schools, and 2) all children
can grow up to graduate from high school, knowing basic math and how to read
and write. A secondary school education is especially critical for girls as
they learn basic sanitation, nutrition, health and market skills. Also,
each year in school delays motherhood and gives them more control over birth
decisions.
During the past three years we have
made significant educational improvements by providing many scholarships,
notebooks, pencils and soccer balls. In May we delivered over $3000 of
wonderful textbooks, novels and flipcharts created specially for African
schools. But now we want to raise the bar so that more students have the
opportunity for more and higher quality education.
Scholarships
We are proud to introduce our unique
Adopt-A-Student program. Contribute to our scholarship fund
by making a selection below. Then, each month during the school year we
will e-mail (or mail) a picture of a student and a story describing the
student’s family and life situation. You will get to know many different
students, and watch as they progress through high school and perhaps even go
to college, or return to the village to start a business.
You or your children can
Adopt-A-Student and send in contributions as low as $4 a month. What better
way for your kids can learn about the joys and challenges of being a student
in an African country? This would be a wonderful Back-to-School, birthday
or holiday gift for your kids, grandkids or friends.
Primary School
Support
You may also invest in the primary
schools by providing funding for desperately needed school supplies
such as paper, pens, pencils, textbooks and even food. Every penny you
invest goes directly to investment in the villages, with no bureaucratic
overhead.
Donate:
Your donation will
make a tremendous, life-long impact on a student and support educational
excellence in the schools. For more information about how you can help,
send your request for a brochure and/or questions to Sierra Leone-Plymouth
Partnership leader Jeff Hall, or
simply mail a donation as described below.
Please
make your tax deductible check out to Plymouth Church,
write “Sierra Leone” in the memo area, and mail it to Sierra Leone –
Plymouth Partnership, 1900 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55403.
100% goes to Sierra Leone.

Four young girls
in
their school uniforms. |
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Teachers have
college degrees with excellent training, and they are deeply committed.
However, they are poorly paid and work with very few supplies.
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With no supplies,
most disabled children get no schooling. This lucky
girl received a wheelchair from a donor in a nearby city.
---

Many classrooms
are crowded--up to 100 students and 1 teacher per classroom.
---

Supplies are very
short. Most students share three to a desk. Most children cannot
afford paper or individual slate boards, let alone textbooks. Schools
cannot afford to buy such items for them.
---

Students are
bright and playful,
work hard, and want to learn.
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"Made Real: Portraits
from Sierra Leone"
An Artistic Photo Series
by Chris Bohnhoff
SHOW #1 through May 15:
The Blake Upper School
511 Kenwood Parkway
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Corridor Gallery Open Daily
SHOW #2 throughout June:
(Opening Party Sun., June 1) Plymouth Church
Nicollet & Franklin Aves.
Both shows: All
sales benefit the
SLPP: Sierra Leone-
Plymouth Partnership.
See
also www.chrisbohnhoff.com
612.250.8084.
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About Sierra Leone
--A Brief History
Sierra Leone is a small,
beautiful tropical country in West
Africa between Guinea and Liberia. It is on the Atlantic coast
in the southwest corner of the left or west "hump" of the
continent. It is about 28,000 square miles in
size with a population of six million. It is
primarily agricultural with rich natural resources such as
raw diamonds, chrome, bauxite, and iron ore.
As a British colony it was home in the 1700-1800s to
three island holding areas for shipping slaves to America. The major city and capitol, Freetown, later
developed as an
experiment in repatriation of former slaves.
Sierra Leone received its freedom in 1961.
The official language is English,
but the common language is a patois of English and native languages
called Krio. In remote villages, because English is taught in
the schools, perhaps a third of Sierra Leoneans can speak it, along
with their own tribal language.
Sierra Leone is second-lowest on the UN Human
Development Index, partly because of its terrible 1990s civil
conflicts funded largely by its raw "blood diamonds." 80%
of citizens were displaced, 60,000-90,000 were killed, and 20,000 or
more had their hands, limbs, or other body parts cut off. The
conflict initially started when Liberian civil unrest spilled over
into eastern Sierra Leone and its raw diamond fields.
A Sierra Leonean rebel group then formed--partly in
response to a self-serving, unrepresentative government in Freetown
and partly in response to the wealth of the diamond fields. The
rebels began a 12-year civil war embracing almost all of the country
and several competing forces. This destabilized the economy,
political and cultural life, and resources throughout the nation.
Most villages were burned, often repeatedly. A majority of the
population hid in the bushes or lived in refugee camps for many years
while heavily armed young soldiers--often as young as eight or ten
years old--pillaged the countryside.
Since 2002, however, Sierra Leone has reorganized its government
peacefully and
democratically. Elections were held in 2002. President Kabbah--who
had been briefly elected for several months in the mid-1990s--won once
again. In 2007 in new elections, the opposing
party's candidate won a firm majority with a peaceful turnover of
power. With a democratic government at work, Sierra Leone is starting
a new prosperity. Travel there has been safe for several years. Sierra Leoneans give outsiders
warm welcomes as the capital, towns, and farming villages rebuild.

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