Resident Coordinator engages with beneficiaries of Development Programmes in Bo, Kenema & Pujehun.

During her three-day mission to Bo, Southern Sierra Leone, primarily for the inaugural Project Steering Committee meeting of the Gola-REAP project between Liberia and Sierra Leone, UN Resident Coordinator (RC) Seraphine Wakana interacted with beneficiaries and witnessed firsthand the positive changes in beneficiaries and communities. 

On Thursday, 3rd April, the RC visited the Fistula Surgery Theatre at Bo Government Hospital, a facility supported by UNFPA through a partnership with the Government of Iceland and the Ministry of Health. It is aimed at accelerating progress towards eliminating Obstetric Fistula.

She met a 16-year-old fistula survivor who shared her experience of losing her baby after prolonged labour and subsequently dealing with constant incontinence. Following her surgery, she is now on the path to recovery. The RC also met the Hospital Medical Superintendent and Matron for the fistula ward, and they discussed prevention mechanisms and community education to challenge harmful norms of treatment in terms of improving identification, referral, and access to fistula surgery and reintegration efforts like providing psychosocial support, vocational training, and skills development for survivors. 

That afternoon, the RC was at an Inland Valley Swamp (IVS) in the Yamandu Community. Through IFAD, the Agriculture Value Chain Development Project (AVDP) has developed 10 hectares of IVS for rice farmers and provided production and processing facilities and machinery to increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses.

Women at the IVS were growing vegetables as a third crop after they had harvested their rice, which will be used not only for additional income generation but also to enhance household nutrition. The RC also visited and interacted with oil palm farmers in the Kalia community supported by IFAD. A female youth contractor explained to the visiting team the agronomic practices they had learnt from the farmer field school on the cultivation and management of their oil palm farms.

The RC started Friday, the next day, with a visit to Largo, Kenema District, where UNICEF and UNDP are working with the Defense for Children International (DCI) on the "Promote the Creation of an Enabling Environment for the Conduct of Peaceful Elections and the Strengthening of Social Cohesion in Sierra Leone" project. The UN Peacebuilding Fund project promotes an environment enabling peaceful and credible elections by strengthening national conflict prevention and response systems, building trust, and fostering peaceful civic engagement before, during, and after the electoral process. It includes the involvement of adolescents, youth, women, and the community, as well as religious and traditional leaders, promoting citizens' engagement through community dialogues, raising awareness on peace and youth participation, and tackling misinformation and hate speech. 

She heard about the project's impact from around 20-25 community members, including traditional/religious leaders, parents, and adolescents/youth. She reiterated that the PBF project has significantly impacted all the communities across the districts involved, including Kenema, Bombali, Port Loko, Kono, Western Area Urban, and Western Area Rural.

The adolescents narrated stories of how they got into forced marriages/ relationships with bike riders and older men in the community, which prevented them from going back to school. With the support from the project, they were empowered to return to school. A visibly happy mother explained how the project had also impacted her daughter. "Now, she is back in school, very articulate, and once, she represented the town at the District Council engagement in Kenema, which led to bringing the celebration of the Day of the Girl Child to Largo. I am so proud of what my girl and the rest have achieved," she said. 

In Kenema town that afternoon, the RC and team joined the bike riders at their parks in the heart of the township. These are beneficiaries of the "Empowering Youth Bike Riders as Sustainable Agents of Peace in the Sierra Leone Project", which UNDP and UNCDF have implemented as part of PBF support.  The youth-driven project used the bike riders as ambassadors of Peace in their communities, preaching the message of non-violence in all its forms, including preventing abuse of women and girls. They explained to the RC that they had previously been in constant conflict with the law – the Sierra Leone police and Road Safety Authority. Thanks to the training, a cordial relationship exists, including a Memorandum of Understanding between the three entities. They also said that they have been involved in spreading anti-rape messages to the communities. A female bike rider explained to the RC the benefits of her training because of the project, but emphasised that they wanted soft loans to own their own bikes. 

That same day, she stopped at a hairdressing salon and a tailoring community training centre. Afterwards, she had an engagement with beneficiaries of the CRS-implemented UN PBF-funded "Politics and Peacebuilding project." A former gang leader named Capone is now trained to be a tailor. He claims the project has helped him put his acts of violence aside, and he hopes that his peers will also benefit from such projects. 

A female beneficiary explained that, with the leadership, public speaking, and other awareness-raising exercises on their rights from the training, they could mobilise and, for the first time, elect a female as the Paramount Chief of Small Bo Chiefdom. 

Before heading back to Freetown on Saturday, the RC was in Pujehun, where female councilors beneficiaries of the "Localisation and Working Together for Peace: Repositioning Women-Focused Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) for Sustainable Peace in Sierra Leone" project explained that now, they have been empowered with training on lobbying, resource mobilisation and leadership. This gives them an advantage in competing with men for positions at all levels.  RC also visited the WPS Coalition secretariat, where members discussed the progress and impact of the project being implemented by UN Women, UNDP and World Vision. 

The visit to Pujehun concluded with a stopover at a Safe Home run by the Youth in Action for Development in Pujehun, a member of the Coalition. Home to orphans and sexual and gender-based violence survivors, the RC emphasised the need for all stakeholders to dedicate more efforts towards not leaving no one behind, especially the victims.