AYV News, September 5, 2023
The Sierra Leone Aid Initiative (SLAI) over the weekend donated brand new school uniforms, bags, assorted exercise and text books, food items and physical cash as school fees to over nine hundred orphans and destitute school pupils in Freetown and Kono.
SLAI’s Country Director in Sierra Leone, Theresa Rose said the organisation is based in the United States of America, with operations in Sierra Leone, adding that it is trying to give back to deprived communities, especially to less privileged children and also boost government’s free quality education drive.
She said the support targeted pupils whose parents are financially challenged to meet their children’s school expenses, adding that the brain behind the support is a philanthropist based in Minnesota, USA named Jonathan Rose, with support from the Grace Lutheran Church in Minnesota.
Ms. Rose went on that the boost is a yearly support which was started years back and that the donors have assured their commitment to continue their supports until less privileged pupils, especially the orphans, to have good quality education as the privileged.
She said SLAI with more supports from Grace Lutheran Church will continue its supports to the less privileged.
Beneficiaries of this year’s SLAI support include pupils from schools in Freetown and Kono and also children at the Network for Children in Need Orphanage Home at Furniture in Allen Town, where uniforms, school bags, assorted school books and other items were donated.
Director for the Network for Children in Need Orphanage Home, Ms. Inna Maria Kamara thanked the donors in the USA and home for considering her children for the support.
She made a humble appeal to the U.S. based donors to continue the support, confessing that it has not been easy to take care of the children in the orphanage.
She said currently, they are challenged with feeding and wears for the children, classroom furniture and more importantly, money to pay salaries to the teachers employed to be teaching the children in the Home.
Madam Kamara with emotions and tears begged Jonathan Rose and members of the Grace Lutheran Church in Minnesota to consider helping her more.
