By Bonnie Williams | Director of Development
Chief Kpanabum (chief of the Jong Chiefdom in Sierra Leone) thanked orphanage director Matilda and her team for housing hundreds of children orphaned by Ebola over the last seven years. At a well-attended reunification ceremony he said, “You have worked well to protect the lives of orphans in our chiefdom and district in general, at a time when everybody was fighting to save his or her own life."
"Today is another day," added Chief Probyn of Sierra Leone’s Bonthe District Council, "where FID and Kidsave have come to find another home for the children you have worked hard to protect and save. I’ll tell you and all present here, that finding living families for the children that have lived in your orphanage since 2014-2015 is the right decision, as these children need to learn how to become responsible parents and citizens. This can only happen outside the orphanage and in the communities, as our children need to know and learn our culture and traditions, and how to live peaceably with one another.”
This ceremony celebrated the reuniting of thirteen orphans with kin after an intensive family-tracing and home assessment effort by Kidsave’s partner FID and its social workers. The children had been living in an orphanage that was overcrowded and unable to adequately care for and feed them, and as these children were now over thirteen years old and had an idea where they might have kin, the work to find those kin was now afoot in earnest.
That search was successful! Each family member found for these thirteen children was excited to hear that the children wanted to live with them again -- having spent over five years in the orphanage after their parents were lost to the Ebola virus. “Children are our greatest asset,” the chief added, “and we must spend all our efforts to provide them the enabling environment and support to grow and develop in a caring and loving home.”
One of the thirteen was Salaymatu, who was reunified with her uncle Mustapha, forgiving him for abandoning her years earlier when he thought she was dying. She was seven years old when Ebola killed her parents in Kanga in 2015. She was unconscious when she was taken to the treatment center in Kenema after showing symptoms of the virus. After her treatment, she didn’t know exactly where she was until a health worker who knew her late parents took her to the Matilda orphanage In Mattru.
After reuniting in June with her uncle she said, “Today will be written in my life story book as a day when I was destined to experience community living; to live with someone of my family who had thought I was going to die because the Ebola virus had killed his elder brother (my father) and my mother. Life has not been easy in the orphanage; but I thank God for the shelter and accommodation provided by orphanage until today."
"Showing me around our family compound and introducing me to other community members as a native of my village, tells me that I could have become a real stranger in my paternal home if I’d fully grown up in the orphanage. I could not have learned the way of life of my people and our traditions. Thank you, Kidsave, for paving the way for me to grow and learn the things of our ancestors.”
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
