Overview
Sierra Leone is recovering from a ten-year civil war. It has a low literacy rate of 35% and approximately 70% of the population lives below the poverty line of $2 per day. Established in 1999, World Hope International-Sierra Leone (WHI-SL) is facing these challenges with anti-trafficking, education, microfinance, and rural development programs.

Anti-Trafficking
As part of the Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAAST) antitrafficking program, WHI began a Rapid Response Project to address the needs of identified victims of trafficking in Sierra Leone. Cases of trafficking are being recognized and victims are being reported to authorities as public awareness and education spread throughout the country’s government and communities. Networking is a critical component of this project as WHI works with government and other service providers to develop a national referral mechanism to care for survivors of trafficking.

A total of 18 survivors of trafficking were reported and received WHI intervention in 2007. WHI provided immediate medical care, temporary housing, food, clothing, and initial counseling. WHI then referred survivors to a partnering organization for medium-term shelter and reintegration services.

Highlights for 2007 include:

•FAAST staff sensitized eight of Sierra Leone’s district headquarter towns; conducted 70 live radio talk shows in addition to its weekly anti-Trafficking in Persons (TIP) broadcast on UN Radio; developed and aired anti-TIP jingles in five core languages; aired a 15 minute radio drama; and distributed thousands of anti-TIP t-shirts, pamphlets, posters, and stickers. Since the inception of the program in 2004, 85 communities have been visited and sensitized.
•16 Educational Round Tables were conducted for over 100 participants including teachers, journalists, Christian and Muslim leaders, village chiefs and other community leaders.
•Four new Village Parent Groups (VPGs) were established and 21 existing VPGs were strengthened with ongoing training and networking activities.
•In partnership with UNICEF and the Sierra Leone TIP Task Force, FAAST staff trained 219 community stakeholders in border chiefdoms.
•FAAST trained more than 450 law enforcement officers on the definition of human trafficking, the Anti-Human Trafficking Act of Sierra Leone, and other applicable national laws. FAAST is now collaborating with the Sierra Leone Police Department to train new recruits on the Anti-Human Trafficking Act of Sierra Leone. As a result of law enforcement training, officers identified and reported 15 cases of trafficking.

Rural Development
WHI defines rural development as any project that enables rural people to escape extreme poverty. Most rural people in developing countries routinely experience hunger and a high incidence of disease. WHI’s water and sanitation, agriculture, and animal husbandry programs give Sierra Leoneans the tools to have better health and food security.

Providing safe drinking water to a community reduces disease and death. A sealed well and pump keeps the water clean and a drilled well keeps providing water through the dry season when many hand dug wells dry up. As of December 2007, WHI has drilled one well, hand-dug ten wells, and rehabilitated two wells in Sierra Leone, benefiting 6,700 people.

Proper sanitation is an important part of community health. WHI staff are focusing on educating people about hygiene both before and after helping them construct latrines. WHI-SL taught 90 hygiene trainings and constructed 32 latrines in 2007, giving over 4,000 people knowledge and access to proper sanitation.

Many people in Sierra Leone struggle daily for food. Seed loan programs help displaced people or people who have experienced crop failure due to drought, floods or pests. At harvest the seeds are repaid and used the next season to help other needy families. Concrete drying floors are constructed to help farmers preserve their hard earned crops. Seeds were loaned to 300 farmers and 10 concrete drying floors were constructed in 2007, benefitting over 6,000 people.

WHI is helping with animal multiplication programs where selected recipients must pass the animal’s offspring on to the next families next in line. In this way, people are held accountable and experience the joy of helping others needier than themselves. However, not every rural person knows how to raise animals and so WHI staff regularly conducts animal husbandry training. Through these efforts the animals’ reproduction rate is increasing, creating more valuable assets for the very poor.

Education
WHI is concerned when children and youth have no opportunity to gain knowledge and practical skills. This tragedy occurs most often in remote rural areas where people are often illiterate and in some cases do not even know how to speak their own national language. They are cut off from economic activity, easily fall prey to unscrupulous middlemen and landowners, and have no hope for a better life for their children. As a result, parents and children can be duped into human trafficking or joining rebel forces. Schools play an indispensable role in fighting injustice in ways that foster peace and national stability. WHI works to develop schools where none exist. In 2007, the Bombali Bana Primary School was rehabilitated and had 350 students. Furthermore, incentive pay was given to 12 teachers who teach a total of 700 students.

Hope for Children is assisting over 500 children in Sierra Leone. Through a partnership with Help A Needy Child International and the Wesleyan Church of Sierra Leone, sponsored children are recovering from the ravages of war and regaining normalcy with opportunity to attend school and have other basic needs met.

Microfinance
Hope Micro in Sierra Leone is WHI’s largest and most successful microfinance institution (MFI). It gives thousands of microloans every month and currently has over 20,000 clients. Its on-time repayment rate is approximately 95% and it has achieved operational self-sufficiency (meaning it earns enough from interest on its loans to cover its operating expenses). Except for a 10% tithe that Hope Micro contributes for charitable purposes within Sierra Leone, all of its Net Operating Profit is reinvested into its loan fund so that it can serve more microentrepreneurs in Sierra Leone.

As the table above demonstrates, Hope Micro has been growing radically. Hope Micro has vastly outstripped the ambitious client targets that were set for the end of 2007. One interesting phenomena is Hope Micro has the greatest demand for the smallest size of loans. This is part of the reason why the average loan size has been reduced to $45.

Hope Micro is an integral component of Sierra Leone’s business development infrastructure. It is the largest MFI in the country and it has more than double the number of loan clients of all Sierra Leone’s commercial banks combined. Hope Micro has received substantial funding and accommodation from the United Nations and other international organizations. Currently, Hope Micro is in the final stages of review to receive a loan from the World Hope MicroCapital Fund (MicroCap). The loan should be issued in February 2008. WHI expects that a large portion of Hope Micro’s future funding needs will be met by the MicroCap and other sources of long term debt financing, including the commercial banking sector in Sierra Leone.