NEWS UPDATE 15/10/2010 - House rent due soon

It has been a while sunce we last sent out an update. No fear however, we are operating as usual. Personal lives have been busy for many of us that are running the operation so there haven't been much time. Our 20 children are happy, healthy and attending school the way all children should. Funding has been tight as usual but we have managed to get by. Thanks to all of you that have supported us. Some since 2004 when we launched First Step. Our biggest obstacle ahead is the rent that is due in November. It will cost us $3500 USD for the next year. Our landlord has treated us well in the past year and the house works well as an orphanage. It is however missing a surrounding wall. We are hoping to be able to have the property owner construct one in the near future. It is not easy to find a suitable place for an orphanage in Freetown. We are far from the most popular tenants in town. 20 children and staff is hard on any building. We hope you see value in the work we are doing and wish to give us a helping hand.

Registered Canadian Charity

Sierra Leone, West Africa

Welcome to the First Step Children’s Center website. Established in 2004 we are a relatively new humanitarian organization working to give street children a home in the Hastings area of Sierra Leone. We operate a home for 20 children.  Today there are no similar humanitarian efforts in this area that we know of. Ten years of civil war and the lowest life expectancy in the world has left many children on the streets to care for themselves. It is our hope that this effort will give some of them a chance at a good life.

Our small group of people has been working in Sierra Leone in resource exploration industry since February 2003. In the time we have spent there, all of us have seen enough poverty, pain and suffering to last a lifetime. It is the hardest to take when it is children that are suffering and they usually suffer the most. Sierra Leone is the poorest country in the world with the lowest quality of life,  according to the UN Development Program’s latest report. Lack of government support for any type of social safety net leaves these children in desperate need. There are various NGO’s and other humanitarian groups working in Sierra Leone with various projects but the needs of the thousands of suffering children still cannot be met.  

Over the past year and a half, working out of the Hastings airport, we have had the pleasure to get to know many of the local homeless children.   The more time we spent there doing our jobs, the better we got to know these children.  When they see us arrive in the morning, they would always be excited to see us and shout hello and wave frantically to get our attention.  When we finished our day of work the kids would still be outside the airport grounds waiting to say goodbye to us as we left.  As time passed, and we got to know the children a little better, and understand their individual situations, we began to spend time and money helping kids on an individual basis to go to school and buy medicine, food and clothing. In one case, surgery to alleviate a potentially life threatening condition came up. These efforts definitely helped, but they were not a permanent solution to the problems. These children have no parents to look after them  and no place to live.  Funding their schooling and providing them with food for a few days is only a partial solution.  They still had no roof over their heads, or any parental figures to look up to and to guide them and teach them. Further, we would not always be there to provide these small bits of assistance, therefore we needed to find a permanent solution.  So, to address this, we have started First Step, with our initial goal to secure the house pictured at the top of the page as a residence for up to 20 children. 

In order to help us with this project, and to have a local perspective, as well as local knowledge, contacts, and a liaison, Francess Panda (pictured right) took on the daunting tasks of managing the day to day care of the children at the Hastings Children Center. Francess's involvement came naturally as she already knew many of the children. She had cared for many of them that were hanging out in the vicinity of her restaurant at the Hastings Airport. After the small shack the children had been using as a shelter fell down she accommodated them in a storage room next to the restaurant until the house we had rented was ready for possession.  She has recruited several prominent community and national leaders to form the board of the Sierra Leone division of First Step. Since our establishment we have achieved charity status in Canada as well as NGO status in Sierra Leone.  Our future hold big plans of expansion. First Step is planning an ambitious project of constructing a children's village in the Hastings area. In the preliminary plans we are aiming for a village with capacity of over 100 children.

Our current home is leased until the summer of 2008. Within this time we are hoping to have construction of a children's village completed in the Rokel area. The Sierra Leone government has allocated us a 4 acre lot for this purpose. In the spring and summer of 2007 we will work hard to finalize the project planning and budgeting for this ambitious project. The village will be fully self sustained with its own water course and diesel generator backup. There will be an elementary school and a kinder garden as well as a medical center with service not only to the children in the village but also to the local community. Currently here is only one similar facility in the Freetown area today. It belongs to SOS Children's Villages and is located on the other end of the city. For a city of over one million this is barely making an impact. The war that raged until a few years ago left thousands displaced from their homes in the provinces. They came to the city in hopes of a better life only to find an even harder reality in the big city. Many of the children got separated from their parents and many lost one or both to disease and war crimes. Our goal is to help as many of these destitute children as possible to a safe environment, an education, nourishment and hope for the future.

In Sierra Leone you can do a lot with very little money. Only $35 Canadian dollars ($30 US) a month will provide food, clothes, school fees etc. for one child. All assistance is greatly appreciated whether you want to sponsor a child, the project itself or in other ways assist us in making this happen.  You may also send clothes, shoes, toys etc. or help with administration and fundraising in Canada. If you want more information or would like to sponsor this project, just follow the link below and fill in our sponsor registration form.