SIERRA LEONE

NAME: The Kundorwahun Project

WHERE: Eastern Sierra Leone, Africa

WHAT: Sink a borehole, install hand pump and cement apron, and provide training in water conservation and management. This facility will be suitable for 250 people and, with careful management, ensure that the water source remains unpolluted.

HOW MUCH: $4,000.00

PARTNER: Wherever the Need

For the majority of people in Sierra Leone, life is not lived, but merely survived. Eleven years of civil war from 1991-2002 decimated the country. Over 50,000 people were killed, tens of thousands more were mutilated and over 2 million, more than a third of the population, were displaced. At the same time the social, economic and political fabrics of the country were destroyed. Despite Sierra Leone’s abundance of natural resources, in 2008 the country was ranked last (or 179th) on the Human Development Index (HDI), a standardized measure of human development.

The village of Kundorwahun (pop. 2,100) in Barrie Chiefdom district, currently has no provision for water and no sanitation. The issues this community is grappling with include water taken from polluted sources and open defecation, risking further contamination of water, resulting in widespread gastro-intestinal disease and child mortality. Locally collected statistics from the nearby Pujehun District suggest that over 4,250 children under the age of five die each year from some form of digestive related illness from a population base of 302,000.