Kick-off!

Folks - Welcome to my new adventure! Far away from the pressure of professional life, a morbid climate of endless overcast days and excruciating MSc. assignments,  I will be cataloging my experiences in Makeni, Sierra Leone.  My first entry gives the background to what I'll be doing.  I hope you enjoy the insights, commentary and endless stories of life in one of the worlds poorest countries - but one where I expect to find resilience, character and optimism. 

While I've been telling friends and family confidently what I'll be doing in Sierra Leone, the cold truth is that we are the first cohort of Western volunteers to work in Sierra Leone (Salone to the locals) with the Craig Bellamy Foundation.  Like any complex project it will most definitely end up at a destination we didn't foresee, go down a path we couldn't have expected and take much more effort than we ever realised.  Despite this, I am confident we can deliver benefits above and beyond our scope, engage wholeheartedly with our stakeholders and leave a legacy to be proud of.  

So why am I going to Salone?  With my first blog entry I'm going to attempt to put together all the basics I've gathered to-date about Sierra Leone, the organisatons we'll be working with and what I expect to find and achieve.  On the completion of my soujourn I'll reflect on the accuracy of my pre-reading and whether we did indeed create some form of legacy.  I hope you find the blog interesting. My writing style, straight-jacketed by years of factual corporate documents and more recently, the Oxford Examinations Board , is a little cold and formal.  But hopefully the experiences I live through and events I influence will provide sufficient colour and intrigue.    


As I write this, Peter, Ed, Will, Joe and I are sitting in Heathrow and our flight is already 3 hours delayed.  But nothing could ruin our sense of excitement about our upcoming journey.  

What is the Craig Bellamy Foundation?

The Craig Bellamy Foundation is a charity that offers children in Sierra Leone the chance to achieve their potential through sport and education.  The Foundation runs both an academy and a league.  The Academy is a fully residential international school based in 15 ocean-side acres and boasts Sierra Leone's best full-size grass football pitch.  It awards five year scholarships to talented footballers aged 11 to 13 and invests in their football skills, personal skills and education.  The Youth Development League is a ground-breaking initiative that uses football to empower a new generation of children to change their own and their communities’ lives.  Established in 2009 with the support of UNICEF, the League provides a nationwide football structure to nearly 2,000 boys and girls, whilst tackling the country’s urgent social development priorities – education, health, youth exclusion and gender inequality.

What is the Collective Sierra Leone?

The Collective SL is a not-for-profit organisation that places talented and enthusiastic volunteers in challenging projects in Salone. It has contacts with social enterprises and NGO's in Salone and matches their resource requirements with students and professionals in the UK and further afield for short and medium term placements.  The Collective is the brainchild of Charlie Habershon, a young and talented social entrepreneur who first envisioned a synergy between the people of Sierra Leone and foreign volunteers.  

What is Salone's post-colonisation history?

Like much of West Africa after World War 2, the optimisism of freedom and independence was quashed by dictatorships, poverty and corruption.  While the country set out on a democratic path, dictators such as  Siaka Stevens executed opposition politicians, neutralised the army and mismanaged one of Africa's most resource rich economies.  His successor, Joseph Momoh, was weak and unpopular and corruption and mismanagement continued.  Entering the 1990's, Sierra Leone typified a failed post-colonial Africa state. 

What caused the Civil War?

There were multiple contributing factors, as uncovered by Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  The Bradt guide book to Sierra Leone (the only one!) summarises the factors well - structural divisions created by the colonial power (the UK), an angry rump of urban youth, a long history of social resistance, a corrupt state, an under-resourced army, grinding poverty and social exclusion.  But the most important factor was the influence of Charles Taylor - the Liberian president who sent his mercenaries over the border looking to capture a share of Sierra Leone's lucurative diamond trade. While it's often termed a civil war, and there is no doubt that locals inflicted serious physical harm on each other, the outside influence of Liberian mercenaries was probably the most important factor contributing to the war.  It is important to note that there was no ethnic or religious dimension to the war, though the stats are grim.  In a country of 5 million people, 2 million became refugees, 50,000 were murdered and maybe half that again lost limbs.  One of the enduring images of the war is of child soldiers, armed with AK47's and machetes, high on coke, marauding through villages and summarily executing innocent civilians.  It took the arrival of British forces in 2000 to restore order.  A peace treaty was signed in 2002 and it has been broadly peaceful since.  Charles Taylor is currently standing trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone. 

What is its current status?

Poor, corrupt, dependent on donor aid.  But peaceful.  There have been two democratic exchanges of power since 2002, remarkable for any African state.  The UN and the Birish soldiers have now left and work is underway to improve national infrastructure - roads, electricity and telecommunications.  But it faces a long journey and today ranks 180 out of 187 countries on the UN Human Development Index.  

Why this opportunity?

I’ve wanted to spend some time volunteering in Africa for a while and I was open to pretty much anything job- or country-wise. I researched quite a few opportunities but the Craig Bellamy Foundation really stood out; it combined my favourite sport with the ability to enhance the lives of children through education and community projects. All of that in a country which has experienced great trauma but has equally great character.  Working with the Collective SL will also introduce me to a world of other opportunities and will allow me to get to know Sierra Leone so much better, which I hope will empower me to dispel the grim images shown in bad Hollywood movies.  My main other motivation is that, after years of corporate work, I’m keen to gain experience in the world of social entrepreneurship, which I believe has the ability to make a material difference in the lives of ordinary people in the developing world.  Unfortunately, all this means that I’ve had to forgo my ambitions of being a part-time beach bum.

What do you hope to achieve on your placement?

Going into this experience with an open mind, I’m reluctant to define precise success metrics before having even started. Nevertheless, I hope that my achievements will be a combination of the following: see local children smiling as they play football, however cliche it might seem; use my experience to come up with fresh approaches to solve long-standing problems; make the league financially sustainable; encourage and/or coax my friends, family and business contacts to sponsor a child or, better yet, an entire team; teach and learn in equal measure from the people around me; and meet locals and other wonderful volunteers who will add to my knowledge and understanding of sub-Saharan Africa.