 | Lauren Thompson '05 (wearing baseball cap) is shown here with children at the Tobanda Refugee Camp in the Kenema District of Sierra Leone. The children and their families participate in the CARE Refugee Food Security Program, which helps engage refugees in productive works through community farming. |
During their spring-break trip to Sierra Leone -- ranked the second "least livable" country in the world on the 2005 U.N. Human Development Index -- a group of Yale students observed in the communities there something they hadn't expected to see too much of: hope.
Everywhere the eight undergraduates traveled in the country as part of a two-week trip hosted by CARE Sierra Leone and sponsored by the Yale chapter of the College Council for CARE, they saw people eager to experience -- and work for -- improvements in their country as it recovers from a violent, decade-long civil war that began in 1991.
The undergraduates -- Amelia Page '06, Clare Cameron '07, Chelsea Purvis '06, Jurist Tan '09, Mina Alaghband '08, Anne Carney '09, Tiffany Franke '07 and Caroline Howe '07 -- were accompanied on the trip by Yale alumna Lauren Thompson '05, who founded the College Council for CARE at Yale in 2002 as an undergraduate, and by two staff members from CARE USA, Mariano Deguzman and Patricia Price.
Thompson, who for the past four summers has interned at the main headquarters of CARE in her home city of Atlanta, says she founded the Yale chapter to give students an opportunity to "become a network of advocates and problem-solvers in the fight against global poverty with CARE," an international relief and development organization that provides sustainable solutions to poverty in over 60 countries. Now working on various projects for the Yale President's Office and Office of the Secretary as a Woodridge Fellow, Thompson is particularly interested in introducing Yale students to CARE's strategy of helping to empower poor communities at the grassroots level through their own engagement in sustainable development projects.
The recent Yale trip to Sierra Leone, she notes, allowed the undergraduates to see for themselves the work of a non-governmental organization (NGO) such as CARE in that effort. As they traveled to villages, a refugee camp and other venues in the war-torn country, Sierra Leonean CARE workers and community members shared with the students their progress in a range of CARE-initiated development, health and human rights projects.
"It was like being in a living classroom," says Franke, a history and international studies double major who co-led the trip with Purvis. "You can read an abundance of material on Sierra Leone and the conflict there, but being on the ground with the opportunity to talk to the people who live there was an unparallel experience. It gave me a new understanding of what development means and what CARE does."
"The country has been able to move beyond a state of war, or even a state of recovery from war, and is looking towards the future," she says. "In Dogoloya, the CARE staff had encouraged the community to create a resource map of past, present and future social, environmental and physical resources. The map for the future was filled with projects the community was beginning: latrines at every house, more wells, etc. And yet, for a community that was 100% Muslim, [its citizens] had also included in their map of the future a church, in order to encourage people from throughout Sierra Leone -- whatever their religious persuasion -- to feel comfortable about moving to Dogoloya. Something about that hope and openness was really incredible."
Purvis, a history major who was recently selected as one of three Rhodes Scholars from Yale, was equally impressed with the "spirit of Sierra Leoneans" during a cultural exchange celebration in which she and other students took part in the mountainous region of Kabala. After performing a variety of traditional West African songs and dances for their American guests, the people in the village asked the Yale students if they wanted to perform something. Not prepared for the invitation, the students managed to narrate and act out the children's story "Jack and the Beanstalk," which a CARE staff member translated for the Sierra Leoneans.
"The people at the celebration -- who ranged from little ones to elders -- really liked the story," Purvis recalls. "After we sat down, the community leader asked what the moral of the story was, and everyone enthusiastically discussed it. Some said it was about respecting your children and giving them the chance to see their ideas through; some said it was about giving children a chance to have the same access to food and health as the older men; and some described how it is about perseverance, seeing your dreams through."
Purvis said she was surprised to see bountiful hopefulness amidst such poverty when she first arrived in Sierra Leone.
"I had naively expected to see a war-torn landscape and miserable people," she says. "And then when I got there, there were all these people who were excited that we were there, who were generously sharing their personal stories and optimistically showing us what they were working on to make their communities better."
Purvis and the other Yale students on the trip also described the impact of poverty and the long civil war in Sierra Leone, noting that the country's infrastructure was so damaged that its transportation and communications systems are almost non-existent.
"We saw a lot of malnourished children and people who are clearly in poor health," Purvis explains. "On a beach we visited, we met a boy playing soccer who was missing an arm. He said his mom and dad died in the war and that rebels had cut off his arm. There were a lot of little kids like him who had gruesome stories."
Learning about the plight of Sierra Leonean youth was an especially eye-opening experience for the Yale students, they say.
"One of the issues that CARE is working on is how to help this whole generation of young adults who have had no education, as the educational system was shut down for 15 years during the war," says Purvis. "Many of these kids were forced to fight in the war. So there is this entire segment of society that is illiterate, uneducated, untrained and unemployed, and many of the youths have been traumatized by the war. NGOs are working with the government to figure out how to educate these people now."
A billboard featuring photographs of children who have been left orphans since the war brought home for Thompson the personal hardships many Sierra Leoneans face, she says.
"It is estimated that there are 900,000 children without parents: either the parents were killed or the children can't find them," Thompson notes, adding that Sierra Leone lacks the kind of infrastructure, for example, that helped reunite American families after Hurricane Katrina.
"We saw dire poverty and malnutrition in the country," recounts Franke. "And in witnessing these for ourselves, we know that these are actual people, not forlorn faces on a commercial or in a glossy handout asking for donations. The determination of the communities in which CARE works to provide a better life for all of its members, and the integrity that CARE's rights-based approach allowed each individual, was inspiring."
Since returning from their spring-break trip, the Yale participants are writing a report of their experiences and putting together a multi-media presentation that includes photographs of their trip. For most, it was their first time in Africa, and all are eager to share their thoughts about Sierra Leone's attempts to rise from the ravages of war.
"Being [in Sierra Leone] allowed me to realize that a holistic view of development, and CARE's rights-based approach, does make the most sense as a way to ensure that development is sustainable beyond the lifetime of individuals or an NGO's presence," says Howe, adding that the trip has also shown her that "development work would be an amazing life path." She is studying environmental and mechanical engineering at Yale, and says she had previously thought of development only from the perspective of energy or water quality.
Tan, who intends to major in international studies, agrees that the work of NGOs can succeed only with the support of the communities in which they operate.
"I learned from Sierra Leone that a development project does not equal giving handouts," she says. "People may be poor, but they have dignity. When given the chance, they don't need us to be 'the saviors' who hand them everything; they will work hard to change their lives. CARE may teach them how deep a well should be, but the villagers are the ones who find the materials, dig the wells and maintain them. CARE may teach them how to farm, but the villagers are the ones who plant the rice, bring their yields to the city on foot and manage their income."
Like many of the Sierra Leoneans she met, Tan says that she, too, is feeling hopeful about the future of the country.
"It will take a lot -- a lot -- of effort to get the country back on its feet. ...," she says. "But we now know that development projects actually work. They are changing people's lives at this very moment."
-- By Susan Gonzalez
T H I S
Trip to Sierra Leone offers students a
lesson in the power of the human spirit
Clare Cameron '07 walks hand-in-hand with a child from the CARE-Makeni Community Health Group garden in this photo taken by fellow student Tiffany Franke. Cameron, Franke and the other Yale students on the trip had the opportunity to observe a series of CARE projects in Sierra Leone.
It was in the small, cattle-farming village of Dogoloya that Caroline Howe says she observed first hand how much hope Sierra Leoneans have for their future.
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