DAI Raises Funds to Help Ebola Orphans Return to School

February 23, 2015

DAI’s UK offices recently held a fundraiser on behalf of Street Child, a charity focused primarily on achieving universal access to education. The charity came to the attention of a DAI-led and U.K. Department for International Development-funded programme, Access to Security and Justice Programme (ASJP), in Sierra Leone.

Street Child is embarking on a”back-to-school surge”—accelerating a range of initiatives to maximise numbers of children in Sierra Leone and Liberia re-entering school as soon as they re-open.

“Our teams in Sierra Leone and Liberia have managed to continue their work in very difficult circumstances,” according to Ingrida Duleviciute, DAI’s Project Manager for ASJP. “The Ebola crisis has affected every aspect of life. Nevertheless, they have managed to find time to help and to bear witness to the impact that Ebola has had on the lives of ordinary families. Ebola has torn many families apart, leaving children orphaned and traumatised. Our colleague Martin Best has spent time talking to organisations that are directly intervening on the ground. He found that the UK-based charity Street Child is doing some of the best work with orphaned children.”

ASJP’s Deputy Team Leader, Amie Kandeh, explains in this video, shown at the event, exactly how Ebola has impacted the lives of children in Sierra Leone:

The DAI fundraiser, a pub quiz and raffle, raised £565.50.

Street Child, established in 2008, aims to create educational opportunity for some of the most vulnerable children in West Africa. Starting in Sierra Leone, then the poorest country in the world, Street Child has since supported more than 20,000 urban and rural children to access a quality education. With the onslaught of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Street Child is concerned at the prospect of the hiatus in education caused by the crisis becoming a ‘full-stop’ in the schooling of thousands of children—especially if children do not return as soon as schools re-open.

Learn more about how Street Child is working with Ebola orphans.