BEAUTY ADMIST THE SLUMS

Dutch volunteer Marenka and US volunteers, Juli, Kristina and Andy and Dave visit Moa Wharf to meet some of the kids and get a feel for our kindship fostering programme supporting vulnerable children in one of the most deprived slum communities in one of the most deprived countries in the world.

The long steep steps wind down into Moa Wharf where narrow stinking lanes lined by pan-body homes – not homes we would know but ramshackle corrugated iron, tarpaulin and with no toilets - stretch down to the shore, strewn daily with plastic detritus washed up from the sea, where fishermen sell and women smoke the catch. Marenka told us:

“I have never seen anything like this. I don’t know how people can live here but they do. These people are so strong, so resilient.”

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We've been providing food support to children, orphaned by Ebola and keeping school age kids in school since the height of the Ebola crisis back in 2015. Our community kinship fostering programme supports aunties, uncles and grandmas who care for orphans of the deadly Ebola pandemic and sees our team in Moa Wharf every month, to take care of any problems identified during the month by Chief Komeh and our resident coordinator. In return for food and education support care-givers agree to some basic care standards, like not administering corporal punishment, making sure children attend school and have time for homework, not chores all the time.

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Mama Mayila explains how our kinship fostering helps give a value to the child:

“Many children are still shunned and at risk of becoming street children, with monthly food support these children can go to school and don’t have to go out every day to make money to support their care-givers.”

Mama Mayila needs your help to extend our Moa Wharf Kinship Fostering programme to 50 children in Waterloo and Kissy Town orphaned by Ebola, many living in child-led families, with teenagers struggling to look after younger brothers and sisters.