The second Wilberforce Lecture of 2008 will be delivered at Holy Trinity church on Friday 21st November 2008 at 5.30pm by the Foreign Secretary, Rt. Hon David Milliband M.P..

His subject will be “Russia in a changing world”.

At the same event the Wilberforce Medal for 2008 will be awarded posthumously to Anna Politkovskaya, the campaigning journalist of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who was assassinated in the lift of her Moscow apartment building two years ago.

From the information I have and especially following the recent victory in the U.S. presidential elections of President-Elect Obama, the content will now focus much more on the changing world than Russia and so may prove very interesting.

Unfortunately, the “security” demands of the Foreign Office are preventing us from widely advertising this event until a few days before it takes place, not until next week in fact and clearly we do not want to present Mr. Milliband with an empty church, so if you are at all interested I do urge you to obtain a ticket from the City Hall Box Office. These are available now to those who ask, though you do have to give your name and address. Apologies for these complications but I’m afraid the details of the arrangements are not under the control of the Trustees.

You may also receive a Global e-mail about this event but probably not until the middle of next week.

The Mayor of Freetown, Cllr Herbert George Williams, will visit Hull for Hull’s 2nd annual Freetown Day celebrations.

Mayor Williams is particularly keen to meet and speak to Members of the Freetown Society, and all members are therefore invited to attend an open meeting in the Live Art Space at the Ferens Art Gallery on Sunday 26th October at 12.30pm. The meeting is being held at that location so that Members also have the chance to view the Freedom Trail Exhibition and the Greetings! Wilberforce Women exhibition that will be on display.

For further information please contact Richard Skog on (01482) 613154

Hull City Council has been shortlisted for 2008’s LGY&H ‘Making the Difference’ Awards in the ‘Looking Beyond our Shores’ category for Hull’s inaugural Freetown Day in 2007. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony in Wakefield on 18th November 2008.

October 25th (the anniversary of the twinning link) was designated as Freetown Day as part of the Wilberforce 2007 commemorations. Freetown Day 2007 encompassed many of the diverse elements of international linking, and acted as a catalyst for the development of innovative projects for the benefit of both cities. There were six individual projects that underpinned Freetown Day 2007 - including academic, local government, community, cultural, faith and practical elements that each exemplify the strength and diversity of the link. Partners such as the Council, the Freetown Society, Freedom Trail, Greetings! Wilberforce Women and the University of Chester combined to deliver the series of events.

The shortlisting follows the success of the Sierra Leone National Fire Force project which won 1st place in the 2007 awards:

http://www.lgyh.gov.uk/EnhancingLocalGovernments/Hull+Sierra+Leone.htm

Hull photographer and author Lee Karen Stow has just returned from visiting Sierra Leone. She was there to work on a project producing a photo documentary on the life of women in the country.

Every day now, without fail, I think about those women. As I open the cupboard door in my kitchen to shelves of choices for breakfast, I wonder what they are doing and how they are coping. I know that a bag of rice in Freetown is now a fiver more (an average week’s wages) and bread is best bought at night when it’s not so fresh, but cheaper.

I flick on my computer, in my own home with running water, a hot shower and a flush toilet, and my only strain this particular morning is to find the right words for the captions to accompany the photographs of those women who are on my mind.

How can I, from the vantage point of my rich and comfortable life, convey the desperation and pain they feel, or even their joy and laughter that humble me so. I check my emails and it’s a ‘thought for the day’ from Cecilia, reminding me that God loves me and all will be well. Cecilia, an orphan with no home of her own and whose job as a switchboard operator is ending soon, is reassuring me that life will be kind and I should be strong.

Rebecca, a new mother of month-old Raymond calls me from a borrowed mobile and in jazzy Krio says ‘’ello, ow de morning?’’ If I close my eyes I can still feel Raymond’s tiny hand clasped round my little finger, hear the dogs barking in the village, feel the sweat slide down my skin in a house with no air, see the cockroach scuttle for the corner, and hear the clang of pots as Rebecca cooks, cleans and sees to the whole family, including her ill father and aunts. Her husband has been unemployed three years. ‘’God will provide!’’ she laughs. I try not to dwell on the fact that one in four children dies before the age of five.

It’s been over three weeks since my second visit to Sierra Leone. Last year, on behalf of Wilberforce Women, I went out to deliver basic photography skills workshops to a host of women who have since formed themselves into a women’s photography group and are helping to strengthen the links between our twin cities. Julie, Francess and Cecilia visited Hull last October for further photography skills, including a day at the BBC, and Francess spent a couple of days with me at Christmas (she still talks about her first trip to the cinema, eating popcorn and how we buy even our pet dogs presents).

On Christmas Eve, I sat with Francess in the waiting room at Hull’s Paragon Station as she prepared to return home. I bought a copy of The Independent which carried a front page report of Sierra Leone as the toughest place for a child to be born into and we read it together. Francess shook her head, ‘’it’s true,’’ she said, ‘’it’s all true.’’ I’ll try to help was my feeble reply, knowing that whatever I write or photograph might move a reader for a minute but in no way would it change a country, or lives, for sadly the pen and the camera are not that mighty.

So in February 2008, in the year when I would turn 42 years of age, I returned to Sierra Leone where life expectancy for women is just 42. I lived with the women, documented their average day and tried to imagine what life was like in their shoes. I watched them cook and clean, I visited their ill-equipped hospitals where wonderful nurses are losing the will to work, the maternity hospital that is forced to wash and re-use disposable gloves despite the presence of HIV, the school where teachers worry about attacks on their female students, the offices where wages are a joke, and the markets where crime and pick-pocketing are rife.

But I could not imagine what it’s like for those women who, quite frankly, exist in a living hell. The women of the filth and disease-ridden slums and the women doped up and forced to beg for their food as the country’s one and only mental hospital is unable to provide meals. I cannot forget the daughter hidden away because a doctor told her mother her floppy joints and flattened face proved she was down syndrome and there’s nothing else to be done. Or Kadiatu, whose legs were severed by a youth wielding a machete and is reduced to begging for money and food. Or Iris (she wouldn’t dare give her real name) whose cheating husband is beating her stomach until she bleeds.

From my desk I email Gladys, who baked a carrot cake for me on her coal stove and led me up a stairwell where the family chicken was roosting in a cardboard box, and into a room with a soiled mattress and a worn dresser. From a drawer she pulled out fading photos of her mother, Adeline, once the daughter of a former president. Her mother looks happy, as glamorous as Diana Ross in her 1960s mini dress, about to qualify as a midwife and return to a Sierra Leone that is safe, educated, prosperous and where tourists lounge on white powdery beaches. But that was another era, before civil war and corruption smashed the country to pieces and bled it dry, and before Adeline succumbed to cancer, leaving her daughters and sons to cram into one floor of a house with peeling paint and broken mirrors.

Gladys replies joyfully. She doesn’t moan about the price of rice or the fact that the chicken has yet to lay an egg. She says she loves the green tea I gave her and is looking forward to working on the second Wilberforce Women photography project which is called ‘Mothers’. In fact, she cannot stop scribbling down her ideas. When are you coming back, she asks … how about this Christmas? I sip my own green tea and reach for my diary.

The stadium was jammed to capacity with thousands of fanatics expecting nothing but glory and on another day that it mattered most, Leone Stars, the darlings of the Lion Mountains, delivered. They thrashed Equatorial Guinea 2-1 to edge closer to the second stage of the qualification series of the African Nations/ World Cup series.

Congratulations to the soccer warriors of the land of gold and diamonds  who have brought pride to our nation. It is a competition in which the Leone Stars have lifted the green, white and blue national flag of Sierra Leone high with magnificient and dazzling soccer against the power-houses of Africa, Nigeria and South Africa. Underrated as unlikely to make it in this group which also includes Equatorial Guinea, Leone Stars proved the sceptics wrong by humiliating South Africa and after yesaterday’s victory, Nigeria could be Leone Stars’ next victim, if they are not over-awed by the reputation of the Super Eagles.
Now, the battle facing Leone Stars is to continue to be among the nine best second placed teams , which would definitely guaranteee them a place in the next stage of the series. A draw at the most in Nigeria against the already-qualified Super Eagles should ensure that .

Congratulations too  to Coach Abu Kanu, who has won the laurels where once famous names like Christian Cole and Jebboh Sherrington failed. Where those coaches were dismissed for poor performances by Leone Stars, the relatively unknown Coach Kanu has succeeded in hammering out a Leone Stars squad that Sierra Leoneans are proud of once again.

Sierra Leoneans should also be indebted to professional player, Mohamed Kallon, who enabled Leone Stars to play yesterday’s match by providing $ 45, 000 after the Sierra Leone Football Association( SLFA )  and the government failed to provide the needed support to the national team . Kallon’s gesture shows that there are still patritic citizens in the land. Though out of work himself ( No team yet to play fo, though that problem would soon be solved by one of the most talented footballers in the world  ), Kallon placed the national interest above his’. That was highly commendable.

A royal navy ice patrol ship HMS ENDURANCE and the British High Commission will today commence a joint seminar on climate change and environmental protection with key UK representatives and the government of Sierra Leone.

The interaction between government ministers, key members of the British scientific community including the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Met Office, the marine and fisheries agency, department for international development and Eco-Securities.

Captain Bob Tarrant Friday told journalists in Freetown that the seminar would be chaired by Dr. Hazell Shokellu Thompson from Birdlife International which would be held onboard the vessel because of its world class platform for climate and ecological research.

He said while in Sierra Leone they would be undertaking important survey work which could be of great benefit to future developments of the maritime economic prosperity of Sierra Leone.

“The visit of HMS ENDURANCE to Sierra Leone encompasses a number of roles for the ship including coastal surveying, training with the Sierra Leone navy and ministerial sea days to promote the importance of fishery protection,” he said.

Captain Tarrant hoped the West African seminar would provide an opportunity for the Royal Navy to create an enduring relationship with its West African colleagues and to promote environmental protection.

The war has caused huge damage to the education infrastructure; 70 per cent of the country’s schools were destroyed or occupied by the rebel group the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Education was interrupted during the war and schools were closed. Significant numbers of children were actively recruited as participants in the conflict. Many students and teachers fled the towns to live in the relative safety of the bush.

Immediately after the war, the country was in chaos with a large number of displaced people and refugees. The new government sent the majority of the children who had lost limbs or were blind to amputees or special schools. These had traditionally catered for all those considered to be outside main stream education.

Sierra Leone has recently made education free for all children by removing school fees. As a result the number of children going to school has tripled. The literacy rate is improving but is still low in comparison with many other African countries; adult literacy is less than 30 per cent, amongst the youth it is 38 per cent.

The majority of children dropped out of school during the war, so there are now primary schools full of children up to the age of 20 going to school again or for the first time.

The schools that were not destroyed are still in terrible conditions and the learning environment is hard. Many schools can not even afford benches or classroom chairs, leaving pupils to sit on concrete blocks or stand. In addition most teachers have not been trained properly; out of 25,000 teachers in Sierra Leone, more than 40 per cent have no qualifications or received any training. This makes it hard for them to deal with the large classes and few resources. Teachers’ salaries are £27 per month, which is not enough. Often they juggle teaching with a second or third job to make ends meet.

Although the majority of children in Sierra Leone now go to school, there is still a long way to go with the construction of schools destroyed by the war. Thousands of children today are still being denied an education because they have had a leg or arm missing, making their suffering worse.

Following the unprecedented success of last year’s inaugural 1st Freetown Film Festival, which garnered world-wide praise, the 2nd Freetown Film Festival will take place from the 31st August to 6th September, 2008, and for the first time in broadcasting history, a selected Sierra Leone film will be shown each evening, on national television.

“Last year’s inaugural festival was a great success and we screened over twenty Sierra Leone films at the Globe Cinema to an audience of over 4,000 people over three days,” said a spokesperson for the Festival organizers. Although many in Sierra Leone still do not appreciate the potential economic, social and cultural significance of this type of event, it did not go unnoticed in the global arena. “We received many comments, plaudits, submissions and offers of support from organisations as diverse as the BBC World Service, British Film Institute and international arts, film and media festivals and organizations around the world, and these have helped reinforce our convictions about the necessity to continue to pursue and develop our work.”

This year, for the first time in history, Sierra Leone films will be screened on television by the national broadcaster, SLBS, every evening of the Film Festival Week. A very positive sign of the social and cultural rehabilitation that has been taking place in the post-conflict aftermath of Sierra Leone’s recent decade-long war.

The Freetown Film Festival is just one of a number of initiatives quietly, but continually, being developed by the Sierra Leone National Film Workshop, a local non-profit organization, run entirely on a voluntary basis by volunteers. It has quickly become respected by many in Sierra Leone and internationally, as the only local filmmaking organisation working to help filmmakers in the development of an indigenous Sierra Leone film industry, and certainly one of only a few organizations able to have achieved so much without any support from government nor international donors.

This year’s 2nd Freetown Film Festival sponsored by kunu.org - a unique new agency launched to protect and promote Sierra Leone’s culture and environment - is concentrating on developing more public awareness and participation in the support of local filmmaking, as well as highlighting the talent and potential of Sierra Leone professionals. The Festival, a week-long focus on Sierra Leone filmmaking, will also include a Filmmakers Forum, which will include lectures, workshops and screenings for filmmakers, discussions about working with investors as well as stakeholders in government, civil society and the private sector towards peace, development and a thriving economy.

“Without doubt, it is now widely acknowledged that film-making is an important part of any culture and can benefit the economy in the form of employment, income generation as well as other areas such as helping to promote tourism and a wider interest in a country,” said a spokesperson. “We are therefore immensely grateful to SLBS for collaborating with us to promote Sierra Leone films across the country. This will allow the whole nation to share and enjoy indigenous films that reflect our experiences, our lives, our cultures.” As it did last year, the Film Festival is a long overdue way of acknowledging the achievements of our country’s struggling filmmakers and is set to create new opportunities for the benefit not only of film-makers, but for audiences, investors, and the country’s culture and economy as a whole.

About the Sierra Leone National Film Workshop

The Workshop is a non-profit organization run entirely by volunteers. It is the only dedicated organisation working with Sierra Leone filmmakers to encourage and support local film production and assist its viable development for the benefit of Sierra Leone’s society, culture and economy.

Contact Details :

Ian Noah
Exec.Director
Sierra Leone National Film Workshop (www.nationalfilmworkshop.org)
Freetown Film Festival 2008 (freetownfilmfestival.org)

admin@nationalfilmworkshop.org

The authorities in Sierra Leone have started a campaign against a recent spate of violence linked to inter-school sporting events.

Fighting between pupils has broken out repeatedly in recent months, with most of the incidents concentrated in the capital, Freetown.

It has become common for schoolchildren to smuggle weapons like knives, razor blades and bottles into the national stadium, where most of the competitions take place.

As rival groups spill out on to the street, motorists and passers-by have been caught up in the clashes.

Some have been injured and property has been destroyed.

Banned

School violence in Sierra Leone is not new. At the end of civil war in 2002, some schoolchildren who had been recruited as child soldiers by rebel groups still carried guns.

These pupils may now have moved on but two of the capital’s oldest schools - the Albert Academy and the St Edwards Secondary School - have been banned from the sports competitions because of repeated confrontations between pupils earlier this year.
A few months ago, it took the intervention of newly elected President Ernest Bai Koroma to pacify pupils of the Muslim Congress school in eastern Freetown.

They had engaged the police in running battles after vandalising nearby property.

Police Assistant Inspector-General Tamba Gbekie says the violence has developed into “a major post-war security problem”.

“We have therefore increased the capacity of our operations support division to deal with such incidents,” he says.

In some cases, police have been accused of responding with excessive force - an accusation they have denied.

Foreign music

Mr Gbekie says the operational division has undergone additional training in crowd control and quelling riots, and do not need to use heavy force.

“We have started a new partnership with school-based organisations to help reduce violence and we believe this will go a long way to help ease the problem,” he told the BBC.

Simeon Jaka, a teacher with 35 years of experience, blames the surge in school violence on new social trends and the influence of foreign media and music.
“The key reason for this violent behaviour of school kids is the influence of the western media, violent movies and songs, violent behaviour of the stars.”

“The kids copy these and bring them to the school environment,” he says.

The emerging music scene in Sierra Leone has witnessed an increase in the number of schoolchildren composing hard-core hip hop lyrics with violent contents, and sometimes translating those lyrics into action.

The children adopt names for themselves and school clubs such as The Nigga Killers, The Death Squad, or The Assassins.

Mr Jaka also acknowledges that standards have fallen considerably in schools and that discipline is at a low ebb.

“Overcrowding in classrooms and the lack of sufficient motivation for teachers are additional factors for this problem,” he says.

‘Message of peace’

Some pupils have, however, taken it upon themselves to eradicate violence from schools.

Students from St Edwards in Freetown have formed the Students Anti-Violence Movement and have been touring schools to urge their colleagues to eschew violence.
Bernard Conteh, a high school pupil who helped set up the new group, told the BBC that their campaign had made considerable progress.

“We have established branches in some 20 secondary schools in Freetown and we intend to spread across the country, into the provinces,” he said.

He says the group’s objective is to “police” school events and ensure violence-free atmosphere.

“We don’t really need the police, we are capable of turning the minds of our colleagues away from violence.

“A good number of colleagues who were notorious for violence are now active members of our organisation, helping to spread the message of peace.”

Before inter-school activities begin again in September, the Student Anti-Violence Movement says it is planning a series of activities, including debates and aptitude contests.

Nevertheless, the campaign against school violence has a long way to go.

FREETOWN, Sep 2 (IPS) - Sierra Leone has been a major recipient of foreign aid since the end of a devastating 11-year civil war in 2002. But government, donors and citizens are all questioning how effectively this aid is being used.

The West African country, battered by years of civil strife and a plummeting economy, relies heavily on bilateral and multilateral aid — according to the ministry of finance, 44 percent of the national budget comes from external assistance.

Allegations of misappropriation of donor funds, both by government actors and NGOs threatens this inflow. One of the government’s principal partners, the British Department for International Development, withheld aid in protest against such anomalies, for most of 2007 and early 2008.

The lack of accountability and coordination is felt by Sierra Leone’s most vulnerable people. The country’s educational and health sectors are in dire straits, despite being priority areas for both government and NGOs.

The government is currently conducting a verification of to weed out so-called “ghost” teachers and non-existent schools that account of misappropriation of donor as well as state funds.

At the end of the civil war, dozens of NGOs sprang up, many lacking adequate monitoring mechanisms or accountability. The questionable performance of some of these NGOs led the government to review its NGO policy. The Sierra Leone Association of Non-Governmental Organisations also introduced new oversight and monitoring mechanisms.

Fatmata Kamara, 23, is a double amputee who spends her time daily begging on the streets of Freetown, the country’s capital. She lost both her legs in January 1999 when rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) invaded Freetown and committed horrific atrocities against civilians, including mass amputations.

“Before my amputation, I was being trained as a hair-dresser and was hoping that after graduation, I would open a salon of my own and train more youngsters,” Fatmata says.

She has not yet given up that hope. In her small village of Kosso on the outskirts of Freetown, where she resides, Fatmata solicits clients who pay small fees to do their hair, money she uses to supplement income — normally not enough — she accrues from begging.

“This is what I use to take care of myself, two children and the kid who moves me around. It is really difficult and all my hopes that I will be assisted by philanthropists to set up my own business have been dashed.”

Apart from tiny mud houses for a few amputees in Kosso, built by the NGO Norwegian Refugee Council, the bulk of them rely on begging to upkeep their families. It is the case of the amputees, for instance, that the effectiveness of aid is been questioned, even by implementing partners.

John Caulker, the executive director Forum of Conscience, which works to support the rule of law and respect for human rights, told IPS: “With the lack of proper accountability and monitoring of donor funds, a lot of the NGOs folded up as donors quickly withdrew funding for a good number of these NGOs some of which were described here as “briefcase NGOs” because they were centred around one individuals or a few with just the motive to make quick cash.”

The Paris Declaration commits governments and donors to meeting certain standards of public financial management, open procurement policies and transparent assessment of the effectiveness of aid.

Sierra Leone’s government has set up a public procurement unit and established regional budget oversight committees to improve aid distribution and effectiveness. The impact of these measures is yet to be fully measured, with a change in government barely a year ago.

However, according to Tennyson Williams, the country director of international anti-poverty group ActionAid, the current aid architecture as a whole needs revamping if it is to have a positive impact on the recipient nation.

“The aid packages come along with conditionalities such as ensuring the recipient — government — gets 37 percent for its reserves, another 37 percent to finance its debts and only at liberty to spend just 26 percent of the total package. This does not give the necessary flexibility for the government to spend,” Williams laments. According to him, donors emphasise macro-economic stability at the expense of social stability.

Williams says that with limited spending, the recipient falls short of delivering the targeted services and this, he says, could lead to unrest and social strife. He also questions donors’ insistence on bringing in technical experts for implementation of projects, and asks: “Has technical assistance done us any good?”

Williams also believes the sizable chunk of funds going to servicing the experts eats into the value of the package itself, sometimes rendering projects a disaster.

The problem here, though, is that the government lacks both the technical teams and the necessary credibility to make aid effective. Corruption in public offices has seen the misappropriation of foreign aid to the extent that donors insist on flying in their own personnel to help with implementation.

Matthiew Dingie, the director of budget at the ministry of finance, acknowledges that resources generated domestically are not enough the run the economy and state machinery. Nonetheless, he blames the conditionalities and benchmarks set by the donors for the ineffectiveness of aid.

“The major problem is the timeliness for disbursement of the aid package. For instance, if money meant for infrastructure such as construction of roads comes in at the rainy season, work won’t go ahead,” he says. This timeliness, he opines, impacts negatively on distribution.

Dingie adds that the aid received as budgetary support is most effective because it comes straight into the government’s coffers and can be spent with flexibility.

“The government will have a free hand to spend it more effectively in areas like health, education and other social services. Where I see the ineffectiveness of aid is the bilateral disbursement. Here, the government does not have control of the recipients who are mostly NGOs and UN agencies, a situation that sometimes leads to duplication in distribution,” Dingie adds.

His argument is that the government may have budgeted for a specific project, something the NGOs may also have received funding for, but they proceed with their work independently of the government.

The government established the Development Assistance Coordination Office in 2004 with the task of tracking development assistance coming into the country from various sources, both bilateral and multilateral as well as through NGOs. But this too has been less than effective because of the lack of transparency, reporting and capacity at both the donor and government level.

The government has also set up district budgetary oversight committees throughout the country with the task of monitoring projects. Dingie says this is working. “This is the best way of tracking anomalies and ensuring projects are thoroughly implemented.”

However development economist Jacob Saffa says a lot more needs to be done. “Development assistance has to be well coordinated to ensure equity of distribution among sectors and regions and proper monitoring mechanisms put in place.”

Saffa agrees that “channeling pledged resources through NGOs and UN agencies without the knowledge of the recipient country is problematic because the bilateral players decide where to spend and on which activity.” Saffa also questions the wisdom behind the “flying in of experts” which he says is unacceptable and “must be resisted” by recipient countries.

He also urges that the government must have in offices strong technocrats capable of articulating the views of the government, both at the level of negotiating aid and its implementation, instead of relying exclusively on “imported experts.”

Saffa concludes by saying that the monitoring of development aid continues to be a major challenge for Sierra Leone and that a thorough framework of monitoring both recurrent and development activities must be put in place. “Strong institutions for such monitoring must be set up at district and national levels and citizens allowed to report on project effectiveness in their communities.”

The real failures — and some successes — of aid effectiveness are the subject of a major gathering of donors, governments and civil society organisations taking place in Accra, Ghana at the beginning of September.

The High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness aims to bring new voices into a review of how aid is managed, and to sketch out a course for greater transparency, accountability and ultimately impact on the lives of the world’s poor.