A total of 2000 Children and 300 Youths will benefits from Football for A New Tomorrow-FANT Sierra Leone (FANT-SLE)’s Danish Emergency Relief Fund (DERF) project which was officially launched on Tuesday 4th August, 2020 launched at the Aberdeen Community field.
According to the organization’s Head of Media, Osman Kondos Kamara DERF project will see 200 children and 30 youths from each of the 10 communities that FANT is operating benefits from donations of food items, free health care and youth capacity building for a period of six months.
The 10 communities which includes Aberdeen, Wilberforce, Hill Station, Goderich, Kroo Bay, Susan Bay, Congo Town and Murray Town in Freetown and Magboruka and Rogbesseh in the Tonkohlili district are part of the FANT-SLE project, which consist of football, handball and other community development.
In his brief statement, FANT-SLE’s Project Manager Mamadu Bah expressed his profound appreciations to members of the press for their support towards his organization operations.
“We are in this community to donate because this one of the 10 communities that we are working with, which includes 8 in Freetown and two in the provinces. We are starting the donation here in Aberdeen and we will visit the other three communities today, we will ends it tomorrow with the balance four communities in the Western Area here in Freetown, we shall continue at Tonkohlili District from the 6th to 8th August 2020,” he said.
Explaining the rationale behind the DERF project, FANT-SLE Administrative Secretary Mohamed Corgay said: “This a response to the Coronavirus, 200 children each from the 10 communities will received a monthly donation of food items, we will monitor these children for six (6) months, we’ve trained 40 coaches within the FANT-SLE project on how to go about the monitoring of the children wherein they will engage their parents to know how they are doing, we also have to engage about 30 youths (15 to 35yrs) from each of the ten communities wherein we will capacitate them to stay away from violence and other development activities,” Corgay stated.
According to the Accountant of FANT-SLE, Bob Rogers the funds they are using to implement the DERF project was originally meant for other purpose but with the COVID-19 affecting sports and other activities they decided to talk with their partners in Denmark regarding the project and they gave them the approval to go about with the project and that the budget they having is limited to December.
“We are not only donating food items to the children but also we have what we call the child care meeting which will see our staff meets with the parents of these children so that whenever they get sick it’s the responsibility of FANT to take care of their medical bills for six months, they will be visiting these children frequently, the reason behind that is that we want make sure the children are safe especially the girl child who are prone to abuse during this trying times”.
“We believe that if our coaches succeed in building the confident of the children, then they will tell them about the difficulties they are facing in their various homes then, we would meet with the families and try to engage them and also assist with some of the problems children are faced with”.
Abu Bakar Kamara who happens to be one of the beneficiaries thanked FANT for donating the food items and also for showing concern and care for them during these trying times.
“I want express my sincere appreciations to FANT-SLE for assisting us with these food items and also the free medical care, a female footballer Kadiatu Tury maintains,” adding that they’ve demonstrated their love and care for us, I am very happy for the wonderful gestures. Statement was also made by FANT-SLE’s Salay Bangura.