Schools for Salone's success comes from building strong partnerships with organizations, both in the US and in Sierra Leone, that share our vision of improving lives by enhancing educational opportunity.  Through tireless effort and coorperation, these dedicated partners respect each others activities and work closely together with us to help bring about positive change in Sierra Leone.  

Masanga Children's Fund is an authorized  Sierra Leone non-govermental, non-profit organization, founded by Joseph Lamin in 2004.  As Executive Director of MCF, he works with partners in Denmark and USA on social, education, water, sanitation and human rights issues in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Lamin provides all fiscal and operational management of Schools for Salone Projects in Sierra Leone.  Through MCF, he purchases imported items such as cement, rebar, and roofing supplies.  The villages donate and clear the land, provide locally available materials and unskilled labor.

Mr. Lamin is also a skilled contractor.  He builds quality schools within budget, in only about 2 months, where others fail to do so in years.  At the request of Schools for Salon, Masanga Children's Fund began taking a 5% administrative fee to help cover its expenses incurred while working on SfS projects.  This support helps MCF continue its many other amazing programs, one of which is the direct and indirect care for 250 foster children in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Lamin did postgraduate studies at the Centre for International Health and Development, University College London (www.cihd.ich.ucl.ac.uk), earning an MSC Degree in Community Disability Studies in 2001.  Click here to read Mr Lamin's own story in his own words.

Donations can always be sent directly to the Masanga Children's Fund
via Schools for Salone.

Minnesota based Books For Africa was founded 20 Years ago.  Their Mission is simple: they collect, sort, ship and distribute books to children in Africa. That's all they do. Their goal is to end the book famine in Africa.  They are the largest shipper of donated textbooks to the African continent.  A recent collaboration with Encyclopaedia Britannica makes it possible to include new and used reference books, including atlases, and dictionaries in their book shipments.  A new contract with USAID will ship 1 million books to Visions in Action in Monrovia, Liberia.

In the summer of 2008, Schools for Salone and Books For Africa began a Partnership Program to ultimately send 1,000,000 text and reading books to the schools of Sierra Leone.  We shipped the 1st container of 22,000 Books in the fall of 2009.

Sallieu Turay is Acting Chief Librarian of the Sierra Leone Library Board and Executive Director and Founder of the Sierra Leone Book Trust.  The Book Trust was officially registered in Sierra Leone in August of 2002 as an indigenous voluntary non-governmental, non-profit organization to salvage education and help create a literate society in post-war Sierra Leone.  The challenge faced by SALBOT is to reduce the high level of illiteracy, promote indigenous writers and publishers, stock libraries and complement book programs that will enhance quality education.

Mr. Turay and the Sierra Leone Book Trust will work closely with Schools for Salone to clear our Books For Africa containers through Sierra Leone customs, receive and store the books until Masanga Children's Fund people can transport the books up country and distribute them to the schools.

Since 2003, the Sierra Leone Book Trust has partnered with the Sabra Foundation in the United States to bring books to Sierra Leone. The Sabra Foundation's web site states, "Many fine charitable organizations attend to humanitarian needs associated with displacement and hunger.  What is often lacking is the foresight to provide humanitarian aid for the mind: support for the educational infrastructure vital to countries in either conflict, or in transition, or countries that are already on the road to development.  Education must surely be the long-term key to not only ensuring localized stability and prosperity, but also to peaceful co-existence and understanding between nations.  With over 20 years of experience, the Sabre Foundation's Book Donation Program is a highly effective and creative way to assist in areas of the world where access to learning, for one reason or another, has been inhibited."

Make a donation directly to Sabra Foundation.

InterConnections 21 was founded in 1997 in Wilson,WY.  Their mission is to help US schools and communities learn about critical world concerns and take action.  They give students and teachers opportunities to "think globally and act locally".  Their current program focuses on engaging high school students in:

• Promotion of human rights, peace and democracy
• Teaching about the United Nations system and global issues
• Sustainability Education and preservation of World Heritage Sites

In August 2009, IC21 and Schools for Salone sponsored a week of education and fundraising events in Jackson Hole Wyoming, to build awareness of the critical need for education in Sierra Leone.   Ishmael Beah, author and former child soldier in Sierra Leone; Dr. Robert Heavner, a psychologist who specializes in working with trauma survivors; Christopher Thomas, World Bank Sector Manager in charge of education programs in all of Africa; and Cindy Nofziger, Executive Director of Schools or Salone, comprised a discussion panel which spoke at 4 different events during the week.  Together, IC21 and Schools for Salone raised funds to build, supply and support at least 2 schools in rural Sierra Leone villages. 

Schools for Salone and InterConnections 21 look forward to an ongoing relationship in supporting these schools that will be built in late 2009 and establishing communications between students in those schools and in schools within the Jackson Hole area.

In early 1999, a group of expatriot Sierra Leoneans living in Northern California founded the Sierra Leone Relief Agency of California (SLRAC). Their purpose in doing so was to provide humanitarian aid to victims of the war, to educate Americans about Sierra Leone’s suffering and promote interest in social, economic and development affairs in the country. To this end, they raised funds and donated medical supplies to a refugee camp in 2002, the year peace was declared.

Since then, SLRAC Board members have traveled back to Sierra Leone numerous times at their own expense. They too determined that education represented the hope for the country’s future. In 2004 SLARC identified Scarcies Secondary School, one of the country’s best, located in the rural village of Mambolo, as a deserving recipient of small grant funds for capital improvement and the donation of school supplies and for transportation.

Until July 2008, when Schools for Salone received our own 501(c)(3), non-profit status, the Sierra Leone Relief Agency of California managed the funds we raised.  Now tax free donations can be made directly to Schools for Salone. 

We thank the Sierra Leone Relief Agency of California for all their support.

Our teamwork has done much to further the cause of education in Sierra Leone. Our coordinated efforts and experience has proven critical in the success achieved by both organizations. Schools for Salone applauds the work by SLRAC at Scarcies, and supports continued efforts to enhance programs as funds become available.

Sierra Leone Relief Agency of California is a
US  501(c3) Tax Exempt Organization

You can help build a promising future for SierraLeone's children.