Canadian Christian and Catholic charitable organizations like CAUSE Canada and Development and Peace – Caritas Canada are seeing fruits from their efforts to support women and people living with disabilities in Sierra Leone.

The resilient West African nation has faced pervasive poverty, strains on health care and lingering social and political tensions from an 11-year civil war that ended in 2002.

CAUSE Canada, a Christian organization based in Calgary, is guided by a mission to endow women and girls with opportunities to achieve their potential through access to education in the northern Koinadugu District.

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According to the 2024 Sierra Leone census, the literacy rate in Koinadugu is 21 per cent — appreciably lower than the 39-per-cent national rate. Comparatively, the national literacy rate for women is 29 per cent, compared with 49 per cent for men.

The CAUSE Canada approach to making a difference on this important issue is providing early childhood development programs and supports needed to help girls successfully complete their secondary education, such as after-school programs, library access, learning clubs and other academic support initiatives.

Girls’ education prospects in Sierra Leone have been historically derailed by pressure exerted on them to drop out of school to become a wife and mother as a child. An 11-month campaign called "'Mi Small Wef”' No More (“My Little Wife” No More)" in 2020-21 in Koinadugu and Falaba spawned a “92-95-per-cent reduction in child marriage rates.”

Another important pillar of CAUSE Canada’s work in Sierra Leone — and other areas of Central and West Africa — is its microfinance program that provides impoverished and marginalized women with small loans and business training to help aspiring female entrepreneurs grow their business.

“Women have so much to give and so much to share,” said Wendy Fehr, CAUSE Canada’s executive director. “When you invest in a woman, you are really helping the family and community to leave poverty... When you are investing in a mother you are investing in her whole family. We know that the children that she brings up, if she has some education, will be healthier. If she has some money and economic opportunity, it is far more likely that her kids will go to school.”

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Canadian women sent love, admiration and solidarity to the entrepreneurial women of Sierra Leone this past Mother’s Day.  The latter received gift boxes with Canadian-sourced chocolates, skincare botanicals, hand-poured candles, textiles and more.

Development and Peace – Caritas Canada, the official development organization of the Canadian Church, is also hard at work in Sierra Leone on behalf of people living with disabilities.

Camilo Coral, DPCC’s programs manager in Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Nigeria, told The Catholic Register the number of people in Sierra Leone living with permanent disabilities because of the 2013-16 Ebola virus epidemic is over 4,000 people, and there are well over 27,000 Sierra Leoneans with long-term infirmities begot by the civil war. Overall estimates place the number of people with disabilities at over 450,000.

Discussions with local partners on the ground, such as the Bombali District Coalition on Disability, helped DPCC arrive at the conclusion that instead of providing temporary aids such as crutches and wheelchairs, a more significant impact could be made in providing support in implementing the country’s “The Persons with Disability Act,” passed in 2011.

“Essentially that is what happened with the Bombali District Coalition on Disability,” said Coral. “We started a process to train them on leadership, policy analysis and campaign planning, mostly at community and district level. Once they completed their training, they began practising their acquired skills. When I say practice, it's, let's say, meeting with local representatives asking about the implementation of the law, being very specific about situations, for example, in terms of health or education or economic programs that were designed for them.”

The second phase of the project was helping assist in improving coordination between among the various organizations that serve people with disabilities. Groups did come together to conduct a survey of how the law is being implemented in the education, health, trades and economic sectors.

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One noteworthy difference spawned by this work is that blind and deaf kids were given the material they needed to succeed in the classroom.

“Moms are very emotional, recounting how they are happy that their blind kids can go to school because now in the school there are available Braille textbooks, for example,” said Coral.