Driving through Sierra Leone

Dan Kelly and Dr.Barrie drive through rural Sierra Leone to conduct a National Needs Assessment of 27 Amputee Camps. Dr.Barrie points out that these villages show the extreme poverty of Sierra Leone. Today. The following is Dan's report.

National Needs Assessment of Amputee & War-Wounded Communities<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> National Organization for WelBody (NOW) reports having completed a needs assessment at the following 27 amputee & war-wounded communities (# indicate communities within location):Western RegionJui (1), Grafton (1), <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hastings (1), Rokel (1), Benguma (1), Lumpa (1), Newton (1)Northern RegionPort Loko (1), Makeni (5), Kabala (2), Bumbuna (1), Fadugu (1)Southern Region Bo (1), Moyamba (2)Eastern RegionKono (6), Kenema (1)All of the above communities were created by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in their post-conflict Housing and Resettlement Project. NRC designed their project so that one family represents one house within each community. Mr. Jusu Jakka, National Chairman of Amputee & War-Wounded Association, provided NOW with a national list of amputee & war-wounded communities in Sierra Leone. After visiting these 27 settlements, NOW reports encountering an average of 10.7 families per community.NOW implemented the following methodology while conducting its national needs assessment. Upon arrival of each community, NOW requested an impromptu meeting with the community chairman or, in the absence of the chairman, a community representative. NOW presented a letter signed by Mr. Jusu Jakka in attestation of the intention of NOW to conduct a national needs assessment. Then, NOW asked the community chairman or representative the following question: What are the most pressing needs of the community? NOW statistically compiled the following qualitative results based upon this question (percentage indicates response within total communities): Food (100%), Education (100%), Health (100%), Water Supply (88.5%), Micro-Credit (57.7%), Resource Center (34.6%), Wheelchairs (15.4%), Prosthetics (3.8%). More specifically, communities indicated their needs to be rice as their staple food, education for their children, access to health-care facilities along with medications, access to water, maintenance of broken water pumps, micro-credit loans for adults to initiate business ventures, resource centers for adults to develop job skills, and maintenance of handicap aids. NOW interprets these results to indicate a lack of basic human rights and a high-prevalence of extreme poverty. During the community visits, NOW also made a subjective assessment of regional urgency. Based upon regional community location, NOW prioritized the following general urgency in order of greatest to least need: 1) Eastern Region, 2) Northern Region, 3) Southern Region, and 4) Western Region. This assessment is grossly consistent with the devastation during the ten-year war.In conclusion, NOW deems food, education, health, and water supply to be the most pressing needs of the amputee and war-wounded communities in the Eastern Region. Therefore, based upon the above qualitative results, this organization will first develop a sustainable, replicable community empowerment model to support the needs of the Eastern Region. Once this model is fully operational and proved to be successful, NOW intends to replicate and expand its efforts based upon the above regional prioritization. It is the hope of NOW to support all amputee and war-wounded communities in Sierra Leone.