Take the 2008 Pledge - Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

It is wonderful that one of the main priorities of our new government is to tackle the pervasive corruption that has damaged Sa Lone. I applaud this priority and know that it will increase accountability of civil servants to the people. We must not, however, forget to implement changes in agencies responsible for instituting reform for the children. We can fight corruption all we want, but if we don't take care of the children, repair the extensive damage done to them, and provide a safe environment for them to heal, we will merely be "chasing our tails." The children are the leaders of the future. We must ensure that when the time comes they are able to be leaders that can carry our great nation into the future. We need to promote education and health reform for our children. These are not privileges - they are rights. Voting is a privilege. Education, food, health, safety and shelter are Rights!!!!!!

We don't want the needs of the children to be lost in the "big" agenda. Let's face it, if we fix today and leave tomorrow still broken, then there really is no future. The present government will not be around in 30 years - those kids, the ones who need our help right now, will be running Sa Lone in 30 years. Let us start now before its too late. We don't want history repeating itself. Let's take a look at where the children have been over the last decade and in the following weeks, decide on how to move forward. I am enclosing a series of poignant and heartbreaking stories that should fuel our need for reform. Things have obviously improved since the time these stories were printed, but we need to remember where we've been so that we don't forget where we need to go.

2008 Pledge

Please note that there is no criticism of the government here. This is a task for all Sa Lone folk. We can all do our little part to facilitate progress for the children. For those of us outside of the diaspora, sponsor a child, adopt a school and do a book drive, send pens or pencils, buy ten pairs of shoes and send for ten lucky boys or girls at a school of your choice (you can even go to payless for this). Ask each and every one of your friends and/or colleagues to donate one dollar (US) or one pound (UK) or one euro (Europe) a month for twelve months and on December 31st, 2008, buy school supplies and/or clothing, and donate those supplies to a worthy organization or school of your choice.

Ask for 50 cents a month if a dollar is too much. Ask your friends to donate all their old clothes or shoes so that you can send it to a trusted individual or organization that can distribute it to those who truly need it. Pledge to make 2008 a year of change for rebuilding Sa Lone - one innocent child at at time. Just sending pens, pencils, notebooks, crayons or whatever you can afford for one child makes a difference!!! My friends and I are putting together a 2009 Calendar. We hope you support us and buy them next year. We will use the money to buy school supplies/uniforms for children at a deserving school. I will have more details later!!!!

If you want to take the pledge, please let me know in the comments section below and update us on your monthly progress. We will support and encourage you all the way!!!!

BBC Report - Children working in Sierra Leone mines

Child labour problems remain unsolved in post-war Sierra Leone, where thousands of youngsters continue to work in mines.

During Sierra Leone's 10 year civil war, children were used as combatants and labourers in the diamond mines of Koidu in the north-eastern district of Kono.

With the war over, government's efforts to get them out of the mines and back into schools are proving to be painfully slow.

No-one seems to know the exact number of children working at the diamond mines in Koidu, because with every passing day, more youngsters drift into these mines.

Blessings

Undoubtedly, the children number several thousands, and many of them get the blessing of their parents, who have come to see them as breadwinners of the impoverished families. Over the past few days, I have been visiting the mine sites here and what I see is incredible. The children aged between seven and 16 go to the mines as early as 0800 and work through to 1800. They do hard labour, like digging in soil and gravel, before sifting with a pan for gemstones and shifting heavy mud believed to contain diamonds.

Hired

A boy aged nine who gave his name as Abou Bangura, and whom I spoke to at the mines site told me that he and his brother, who is 14, work for their father, who is disabled. Abou has never been to school and he told me that he is not at all interested in school. Other children, some of them former combatants, some orphans and street children, are hired by adults to do their dirty work for them. The ministry of gender and children affairs, in collaboration with non-governmental organisations, World Vision and Aim Sierra Leone, have registered 1,200 child miners, with the aim of taking them out of the mines.

About 50 of them have been placed in schools, but a huge number of the children are still slaving away in the mines, raising concern among children's advocate in the country. Teachers in the schools where the children have been enrolled are also worried that without any attractive incentives, the youngsters may be tempted to return to the mines.

VOA Report - Street Children of Sierra Leone Lead Brutal, Dangerous Life

In Sierra Leone, one of several West African countries recently devastated by civil war, aid organizations are trying to save children from prostitution or forced labor.

A decade of conflict has made poverty in Sierra Leone so bad that many families cannot afford to take care of their children. Over 1,500 children live on the streets in Freetown alone, making a living doing odd jobs. They are the children most in danger of violence and sexual abuse.

At a truck park in the eastern part of the capital, many children come to sleep in the empty shells of cars. Prostitutes and drug addicts also come there, and so do aid workers from the organization Action for Children in Conflict (ACC). The organization offers them temporary shelter in the small town of Makeni, hundreds of kilometers away from the dangers of Freetown.

Eight-year-old Hannah Masany was found in the parking lot. She had been out on the streets since she was six. Hannah's father was killed during the war, and her mother could not afford to look after her.

Hannah said that she was not afraid on the streets, as older street children helped take care of her. But many girls as young as Hannah will have sex with men in order to earn enough money to eat.

"People come along -- it is a kind of enterprise which has just developed recently, it's a very quick way of getting money," says ACC Senior Councilor John B. Koroma. "So people come out and meet some of these children in the street, because they will not have people to take care of them, they make them promises that ‘I will pay school fees for you, I will do this and do that.’ So they collect these children at the end of the day, they move them out of the country, to use them as child labor and other things."

Other risks for children on the street are drugs and alcohol, which they use in hopes of providing some relief from the hardship in their lives.

15-year-old Ansumana Kobba was also found in the truck park. He had been out on the street for four months. Ansumana's parents were killed during the war. He was sent to live with his uncle, but left when he was forced to go to work and was not sent to school.

Ansumana says he made money carrying things for people, but spent most of it on gambling and the local palm wine called Poy. Although he is glad to be off the street and in school, Ansumana says he is unable to face going back to his uncle or other members of his family. He says he would like to be put in a foster home.

The children cannot stay at the center indefinitely, and many of them will be sent back to members of their family.

Most go back to the same situation they left behind, including physical and sexual abuse. Although ACC will monitor the kids for a few months, there is no guarantee they will remain with their families.

Donald Robert Shaw, who works with the United Nations childrens' organization UNICEF, says that the number of street kids will not decrease until the underlying causes that make children leave in the first place are addressed.

“Our partners' anecdotal information suggests that the number is increasing as the levels of poverty and vulnerability are significant," said Mr. Shaw, "that either push children onto the streets or children end up leaving homes to find better economic livelihoods out of impoverished families.”

UNICEF is working with the Sierra Leonean government to bring children back into the educational system, so children are not exposed to dangers on the streets. Most importantly, it is mounting campaigns against physical and sexual abuse of children. But attitudes are difficult to change.

IPS - SIERRA LEONE-CHILDREN: Young, Armed and Dangerous

FREETOWN -- Since the military coup in May, hundreds of child soldiers have fled from camps for demobilised fighters and are back on the streets armed with AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades.

It is a common sight to see the child soldiers patrolling the streets in major cities throughout Sierra Leone, bringing renewed fears that children are being drawn once again into armed conflict.

According to some reports, the children are being armed by the new military junta, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and its allies, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) now known as the People's Army, to fight the local hunters militia, the Kamajors.

The Kamajors, who fought alongside government troops against the RUF during the civil conflict, have vowed to march on Freetown, the capital, to oust the junta and re-instate President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.

There have been reports of fighting in the Southern District of Bo between the combined forces of the AFRC/RUF and the Kamajors. Hundreds of child soldiers are reportedly among the AFRC/RUF fighters.

Many of the children had been placed in camps for demobilised soldiers following the November 1996 Peace Accord signed between the ousted government of President Kabbah and the RUF rebels.

According to one weekly newspaper report here, ''more than 60 percent of (a group of) 1000 fighters'' screened by the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Resettlement Committee before the May 25 coup were children.

Thousands of child soldiers had been demobilised and encamped at Jui, about 30 kilometres east of Freetown, where they were receiving technical and vocational training in a programme sponsored by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).

Referring to the flight of the children back into the conflict, Thomas Sesay, a counselling officer at the Jui camp said: ''This is unfortunate because we had succeeded in transforming most of these kids and had reintegrated them into society.''

Sierra Leone has one of the world's worse records for recruiting children as soldiers. Between 1992 and 1996, the period of the worst fighting between the government forces and the RUF, an estimated 4,500 children were forced to fight on both sides.

Children were abducted and forced to commit various atrocities. Some were ordered to torture and murder their own relatives, before being taken to other villages to slaughter others.

UNICEF, an international advocacy organisation for children's rights, has repeatedly called on the Sierra Leonean authorities to stop using children as soldiers. ''UNICEF calls on all warring sides to put an end to the use of children as combattants and to incorporate provisions for their physical and emotional welfare in a future peace settlement,'' Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's Executive Director said at the height of the conflict.

''Children should have no part in war. By making them agents of civil conflict and depriving them of their childhood, the vicious cycle of violence is perpetuated,'' she added. ''Child soldiers are a symptom of the wider problem, the complete neglect of a whole generation...''

Thousands of children have been orphaned by the Sierra Leonean conflict, making them vulnerable for recruitment. According to some estimates, 8000 children were separated from their families or orphaned by the civil unrest.

The chair of the Civil Liberties Congress, lawyer Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie, said this trend must be reversed as a matter of urgency.

''We cannot wait until the situation gets worse. These kids have the temptation of drugs and money and many have lost their parents,'' Tejan-Sie said. ''It is high time someone tells these soldiers and rebels to stop recruiting innocent kids.''

According to sociologist Kama Bangura of the University of Sierra Leone, children are not just affected by being forced to carry a gun. The war, he said, has disrupted their lives in many ways.

''Children will be hardest hit by the gradual collapse of basic services,'' Bangura said. ''Food distribution has been disrupted, immunisation campaigns have been halted, leaving children susceptible to epidemics of measles, typhoid and whooping cough.''