St Joseph’s School for the Hearing Impaired is one of only two schools for deaf children in Sierra Leone and the only one that takes boarders. It has 250 students aged from 3 years to 23 years and trains them to find employment in a country where there are limited opportunities for young people and hardly any opportunities for those with a hearing impairment. The school’s director is Sister Mary who works tirelessly for the future of the children and who is an inspiration to all who visit.
St Anselm’s College has a historical link with Makeni, the town where the school is located when its former Headmaster Brother Kerrigan was killed during the brutal Civil War. Staff and students visit every year supporting a range of educational causes. When Ebola struck, we knew we had to help.
Friends of St Joseph’s School is a UK based registered charity (1142397) set up after a visit by a group of lawyers to Sierra Leone in November 2009.
Both organisations have formed a joint response to the terrible Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and have so far sent over 1½ tonnes of medical supplies to Makeni at a time where there was little response from the international community.
Now that a British treatment centre is due to open in Makeni in the middle of December we are looking to the future when life returns to some sort of normality and we want to help equip the school and the students to give them the best possible start in life.
We are buying a container and filling it with tools and equipment desperately needed by the school. This will be shipped out to Sierra Leone in the middle of January. The container will then be converted into a combined shop and workshop and placed at the front of the school to give the students a place to work and display their created items for sale to the public. This would give them experience to set up their own businesses in their local areas.