Inspiring Visitors

Today we have two visitors in Koidu Town: Lois Park and Mathias Esmann.

Lois is the third GAF intern in Sierra Leone this summer. She was also a GAF intern last summer, and so this summer she came back with funding and a plan for a feeding program to help malnourished children in the Portloko District. She has a blog that describes her experience; it's here.

Mathias is a UCW grad from the Nordic College who also attends Princeton. He is a co-founder of an organization called Gmin and recently returned from distributing 4000 bednets (and education about how to use them) to villagers in southern Sierra Leone.

Both of these two have really impressed me with their combination of independence, capability, and realism about their projects. Each project is specific, with reasonable goals and practical implementation plans, and yet they also address issues at the heart of the low life expectancy and high child mortality rates that haunt Sierra Leone. In both cases they use community involvement and have viable plans to measure and monitor their progress. I hope that the future of the world's public health projects falls into the hands of people like Lois and Mathias.