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The Child Rescue Centre (CRC) in Sierra Leone began as a faith-based residential children’s home established in 2000 with 40 children rescued from the streets during the last two years of a brutal 10-year civil war.
It was founded through a partnership between a United Methodist Church (UMC) congregation in the US and the UMC Sierra Leone Annual Conference. Within a year, the center added a family preservation program designed to provide material and financial support to at-risk families and remove the need for families to send their children to the orphanage. Over the years, the…
This report explores children and young people’s views and experiences related to COVID-19 and its indirect impacts. Firstly, it looks at children and young people’s perceptions of how COVID-19 has had an impact on their lives and countries. Secondly, it seeks to highlight the ways in which they are working to help to stop the spread of the virus and lessen its impacts.
This research included individual and group interviews with 160 children and young people (80 girls and 80 boys) between the ages of of nine and 18 from eight countries across West Africa: Central…
This child-led research initiative was conducted under the umbrella of World Vision’s DEAR project (Development Education and Awareness Raising) and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The authors worked together to raise children’s voices to the highest levels possible in order to have an impact on decisions and processes that affect them, especially the work around the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. These child researchers were invited to choose one of the issues covered by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each country team discussed these issues, and they decided to…
Abstract
Globalization of knowledge and scholarship raises the challenges of dialogue between Global North and South. Northern knowledge and voice remain privileged, while writing from the South often goes unread. This is true also in emerging adulthood and care-leaving scholarship. The special issue of Emerging Adulthood titled “Care-Leaving in Africa” is the first collection of essays on care-leaving by African scholars. It presents both care-leaving and emerging adulthood scholars from the Global North a unique opportunity to consider the implications of a rising…
Abstract
The Child Rescue Centre became the first orphanage in Sierra Leone to fully transition from residential to family-based care. The decision to transition was made for many reasons, but the most unique reason is found in the story of Child Rescue Centre Director, Mohamed Nabieu. Nabieu was brought to the orphanage in 2000 and spent the majority of his childhood in the facility before returning as its Director. Following a 2016 directive from the Sierra Leonean government working with UNICEF for all orphanages to develop plans for deinstitutionalization, Nabieu and Dr. Laura…
Prepared over a period of one year from September 2015 to September 2016, UNICEF, in partnership with relevant agencies and governments, presents feedback and lessons learned from the Child Protection Programme during the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic response in West Africa from August 2014 to December 2015.
The report examines three affected countries – Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea – to analyse the degree to which the response was successful in addressing the scale and unique nature of the child protection situation that arose due to the epidemic. Key lessons learned and…
Abstract
Although international attention has focused mostly on boys as child soldiers and youth affected by armed conflict, girls account for more than 40 % of this population globally. Primarily recruited and abducted into armed conflict to serve as “wives” and sexual slaves for commanders and other soldiers, girls experienced high rates of rape and sexual abuse. Using data from a longitudinal study conducted in collaboration with a major international Non-Government Organization (NGO) in Sierra Leone, this study examined the contributions of potentially stigmatizing war violence…
ABSTRACT
Using inter-agency action research in Sierra Leone, this chapter provides a case study on how a highly collaborative approach can enable child protection research to achieve a significant national impact. The chapter describes how the inter-agency research facilitated a communitydriven approach to addressing teenage pregnancy. The promising results obtained before the Ebola crisis helped shape a new Child and Family Welfare Policy that featured the role of families and communities rather than formal structures. Then it examines how the social process of the research enabled it to…
Abstract
While the principles behind community-based participatory research (CBPR) are firmly established the process of taking CBPR with children and youth to scale and integrating it into the programming of non-governmental organizations has been scarcely documented. This paper reflects on the experiences of Save the Children in implementing a multi-country CBPR program to increase understanding of kinship care in DRC, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The paper discusses challenges faced, lessons learned and highlights how the research process enabled action and advocacy initiatives at…
This presentation describes research undertaken in Sierra Leone by an inter-agency group to map the child protection system in the country, including the community-based child protection mechanisms (CBCPMs) in place. The presentation asks "have we mapped CBCPMs adequately in mappings of national systems? Which CBCPMs do people actually use, and how they are linked with and supported by formal aspects of the national child protection system?"