Shelter For Africa - Target Group

Target Group
In Sierra Leone the child mortality rate is at a staggering 146 per one thousand. Beyond that, the average citizen will have a life expectancy of only 43 years. Most children die of malnutrition or other diseases affecting them, like small pox. Those between the ages of five and eight are forced sell wares on the street in order to feed the family.

However, the paradox of Sierra Leone to this day remains the poverty of the people living in a land that should, by rights, make them one of the richest African nations. Although structural and economic problems predate the “Diamond War”, its rampage across many areas of the country over ten years has caused the most damage to the nation. By the end, ten thousands of people had been made homeless, become displaced within Sierra Leone, and had travelled as refugees to neighbouring countries like Guinea and Liberia to escape the fighting. The UNHCR estimated the number of these refugees at the peak of the Civil War at 485,000.

The majority of the refugees were women, children and the elderly. A significant number of the children were not part of the refugee flood. Instead, they were kidnapped by the rebel movement and forced to become mine workers for the extraction of diamonds, or child combatants for the rebel cause. The international media documented the atrocities committed by the Rebels throughout the War, and the role of child soldiers in those atrocities.

Their experiences left these children utterly traumatised. Shelter for Africa trained a small number of these former child combatants in the production of affordable building materials. It made us choose an emphasis in our activities on this vulnerable group.

The vulnerable people are not only the children and the adolescents. There are an unknown number of young women in Sierra Leone, for whom prostitution has become the first and single possible source of income. Many of these women were forced into sex servicing during the rebel war. An alternative means of earning their incomes in a self-sufficient and independent way will get these women off the streets, help in the fight against the spread of HIV, and provide security and care for them.

Unfortunately, most women do not have any or little formal schooling or vocational training. The literacy rate among women is reported to be at an astounding 20% of the population, less than half of the rate for their male counterparts. Shelter for Africa therefore provides training of vocational skills and the development of commerce for theses women.