Sierra Leone Food Security

The Club has been involved In Sierra Leone for a number of years working with the local charity, Kids Action.  Kids Action was formed to help orphaned and displaced children during and after the civil war there which raged from 1991 to 2002 leaving over 50,000 dead.

Initially Kids Action ran a children's home in the capital, Freetown.  St Fittick’s helped in a number of ways such as, arranging to send over a tractor and plough to cultivate land so that the home had a source of food and income.  Time has moved on, many of the original children have left the home and now the tractor and plough is being used by the wider community to provide food for an impoverished area.

The club continues to fund the education of the youngsters recognising that education is a means of progressing out of the cycle of poverty in which much of the population still finds itself.

 A number of activities have been organised to raise both funds for and awareness of the project, the most innovative of which was in a duck and goat race (the ducks were plastic, the goats were real!).

The event was attended by then 21 year old Mariama John, an ex-resident of the children’s home in Freetown who is now a student at Freetown University.  Mariama was visiting Aberdeen to raise awareness of the work of both Kids Action and St Fittick Rotary Club.

On her return to Freetown, Mariama formed a committee to co-ordinate the project at that end.   She has indentified a village at Rotifunk as an appropriate community.  It is situated in the Moyamba district in the Southern region of Sierra Leone, about 63 miles from Freetown – but it takes about five hours by road to travel there.

Rotifunk Village and river

Bridge access to Rotifunk

Rotifunk Children

Rotifunk Villagers

In a country that ranks one of the lowest in the Human Development Index, Moyamba District in the Southern Province is the poorest of the poor.  44% of under- five year olds suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The pilot project funded the purchase of 30 West African dwarf goats.   Each goat should produce about 3 pints of milk per day for 10 months thus providing a source of food, nutrition and income for a family.  Also, each goat will produce, on average 3 kids per year.  These are passed on to other members of the community - and so it continues.

The pilot project established that this small project will have a major impact in reducing child and adult malnutrition in the village and will be able to generate additional cash income to provide for education and health.

Another aim of the pilot project is to ensure that subsistence farmers in a small village are capable of successfully establishing and managing a community project.

The villagers have shown a great deal of initial commitment by donating 50 acres of land to the project which they have cleared to grow fodder and are constructing a compound where the goats  and chickens will be kept overnight. During the day the goats will accompany the women to the fields where they work.

Land clearance

Site clearance continues

Goats have now been introduced to three communities, the final one at Malparia.

Goat delivery

Rotifunk villagers with goats

Family with goats

Goat shed

The introduction of chickens is also going extremely well.  There are now 95 cockerels and the plan is that they will be sold to families to mate with local hens to improve the breed.

April 2016 Update

Goats Project. We started the final phase of the District Grant Supported Goats project in June 2015 at Newton which had been delayed because of Ebola Crisis. The completed project has provided 120 breeding goats for three communities.

Chickens Project.  We completed the construction of a second chicken house at Ribbi and provision of 100 day old chicks.

The goats breeding project is going extremely well and in time we shall hear about the chicken project.

These projects will go a long way to alleviating malnutrition in the Rotifunk area where over 40% of children suffer from acute malnutrition.