Service For Peace in Sierra Leone Joins the World to celebrate the International Volunteer Day

 Service For Peace is a member of the Building Bridges Coalition, is holding an event on Friday, December 4, to celebrate International Volunteer Day and promote the signing of the Service World declaration. Everyone who considers themselves a volunteer is invited to the brown-bag lunch party at 12:00 p.m. in our office at 1875 K St NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20006.

 In Sierra Leone, Service For Peace will be celebrating the International Volunteer Day by raising awareness in order to promote the signing of the Service World declaration through the joining of other networks.

The Service World International Service Declaration commemorates the original petition circulated by the University of Michigan students 50 years ago that inspired the creation of the Peace Corps.  The Declaration celebrates the future of international volunteer service and calls to accomplish President Kennedy’s original vision to send 100,000 volunteers abroad annually.

 The Service World plan focuses on multi-lateral partnerships and exchanges, so that Americans serve side-by-side with people from other countries, including in the United States. Under the plan, both skilled and non-skilled volunteers of all classes and ages will serve abroad for both long- and short-term assignments and veterans have specific opportunities to utilize their many skills in a civilian capacity. We believe an inclusive and mobile model of volunteering will contribute to the development of a new generation of global leaders. To sign the pledge online, please go to: www.ourserviceworld.org/takeaction.

 It seems that the world is finally coming together to address global issues through service. The year 2011 has been proclaimed as European Year of Volunteering by the European Union, and all EU member states are setting up for 2011, while the EU is preparing various support tools like a Resource Library, an Online Marketplace for sharing and matching needs, collecting volunteer commitments for 2011 and even offering funding opportunities.

 Volunteer service by people of all nations and in all nations should become a common strategy in meeting pressing challenges in education, health, the environment, social services and more. We urge all citizens who care about their communities, the world we live in and the future generations, to think about something they are passionate about that is not working well in the system and get involved to solve it.

About Service For Peace-Sierra Leone Office

Service For Peace in Sierra Leone is an independent nonprofit organization providing service and learning opportunities through community projects which promote transformational and sustainable personal and community development around the world. We bring together people and partners of diverse faiths, ethnicities, nationalities, generations, and cultures to address profound social needs by discovering commonality and genuine appreciation for differences – all through service. We believe that peace begins with the inner peace fostered by service to others and that active cooperation provides the foundation and the real hope for peace.

For more information on the work of Service For Peace in Sierra Leone contact:

Abdulai Abubakarr Sesay

Executive Director

Service For Peace Sierra Leone

E-mail:serviceforpeacesierraleone@gmail.com or sierraleone@serviceforpeace.org

Web:www.serviceforpeace.org/sierraleone

Tel:+23277273135/+23233110785

Service For Peace in Sierra Leone advance the rights of young people

 

Introduction

Service For Peace-Sierra Leone is a voluntary, international and interdependence non- profit making organisation that operates in Sierra Leone in order to achieve lasting peace and improve in the quality of the deprived young people, their families and their communities to meet their basic needs.

 However, it also strives to increase their ability to participate in and benefit from their societies through fostering relationships in order to increase understanding and unity among peoples of different cultures in the world and that promote the rights and interests of young people throughout the world.

Service For Peace -Sierra Leone and Children

Service For Peace Sierra Leone (SFP-SL) has been working with children in Sierra Leone for the past three (3) years and it was among the organisation that advocated for the passage of the Child Rights Act of 2007 in parliament and today it has become a law in protecting  the rights and dignity of children in Sierra Leone.

However, every year the organisation celebrates the African Child’s day as this day is a day that thousands of South African children were massacred in South Africa, Soweto during the apartheid regime it was against this backdrop the Africa Union set aside June 16^Th to be celebrated every year around Africa.

In celebrating this day, the organisation targeted children who are victim of corporal punishment in homes and schools as the program was theme: ‘’Talent Exhibition, children must be heard and seen’’. The program was geared towards public awareness with regard children’s rights and also children to show case their talent as future leaders.

Service For Peace Sierra Leone has been working closely with young persons in order to improve their lives. Majority of these young persons are abandoned by their parents as they feel marginalised in the society as they find themselves in a very deplorable condition thinking that all is lost and this even made them to become offender in society or communities. For Instance, on the 7^Th February 2004 Three (3) juveniles escaped from the Remand Home (Prison for Juvenile) in Kingtom.

Staff at the Remand Home (Prison for Juvenile) ordered their arrest and instituted corporal punishment, beating the young persons with sticks with nails on them. Eye witnesses commented that the officer administering the punishment he took grounded hot peper and applied it to the bodies of these young persons. However, remains of Ibrahim Rogers aged 10, were subsequently found in a ditch near the Remand Home, and other two young persons involved in the incident were hospitalized.

In another development, the organisation mounted a School to School visit campaign in four Secondary Schools on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and other international instruments that protect children. This was as a result of the Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) celebrations that measure the impact created by young people around the World and that Sierra Leone is a signatory to most of these international instruments that protect children or young persons

With the help of my organisation and other partners we provide Civic education for them and created counselling program for them as the program not only targeting the children but also the parents so that they could take care of their children.

However, in pursuing our campaign for the protection of children or young persons  in Sierra Leone, over the years there are challenges that we do faced and one of the challenges, is how the government of Sierra Leone should comply with its international obligations  relating to Children’s rights particularly under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as they are still violating article 37 of the CRC which says ‘’States should ensure that no child is subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or capital punishment or life imprisonment’’ an example is the incident mentioned above. Even though the government of Sierra Leone has made tremendous effort in passing the 2007 Child Rights Act(CRA) in parliaments but more needs to be done with regard the protection and promotion of children’s  or young persons’s Rights as children are still facing inhuman or degrading treatment or corporal punishment  in homes and schools. Passing the bill is one important step for the protection of children but its popularisation remain to be a problem therefore not every body is aware with this act subsequently, many people continue to perpetrate physical violence against  children with impunity

Finally, Service For Peace Sierra Leone would be very grateful to partner with like minded organisation to pursue the promotion and the protection of  the rights and Dignity of young people  in Sierra Leone

For more information contact:
 

Abdulai Abubakarr Sesay

Executive Director

Service For Peace Sierra Leone

E-mail:serviceforpeacesierraleone@gmail.com   or sierraleone@serviceforpeace.org

Web:www.serviceforpeace.org/sierraleone 

Tel:+23277273135/+23233110785