By Crispina Cummings
An international non-governmental organisation in Sierra Leone,Don Bosco Fambul, has collaborated with the ministry of social welfare gender and children’s affairs to provide temporary shelter for children affected by the Ebola outbreak.
Recounting their recent activities in the fight against the disease, director, Lothar Wagner, said they had already set up an interim care center at their Fort Street residence in Freetown to accommodate children who had either lost parents to the Ebola disease or had survived the sickness.
He said the center would accommodate about 60 children, who would be between the ages of 6 and 17 years, for a period of two weeks at most.
Wagner said during the 3 days lock down last month they teamed up with the ministry to bring street children into the center where they were attended to by some social workers. He explained that the social workers, after being sent out to meet the children and bring them into the center, also provided counseling and medication for them.
“We also traced the families of those children so as to integrate them back into their families,” he said, adding that before and after the lockdown about 100 children were re-united with either their families of origin or extended families.
The Don Bosco director said they also provided stress therapy, trauma healing and recreational facilities for the children for as long as they stayed under their care. He said the children had an opportunity to get free counseling, especially on issues surrounding girls. He added that their on-going activity was targeting girls between the ages of 8 and 18 who had experienced violence like rape.
“We also have an operational counseling center at country’s main prison on Pademba Road which opens all through the week,” he said before donating 10 mobile hand washing taps to the social welfare ministry to be placed at strategic points across the country.
Social Welfare minister, Moijueh Kaikai, whiles thanking the benefactors for securing the future of the children, noted that working with the NGO had made it easy to reach street children and build their confidence.
He promised that his ministry would continue to work with Don Bosco to protect orphans and widows, even after the Ebola fight would have subsided. He said they would soon start to target women and children in quarantined homes and to provide them with food items.
(C) Politico 02/10/14
