On Thursday March 10th, 2016 Langdon School was filled with games, activities and much more all in support of Free the Children to support Sierra Leone and Clean Drinking Water.
Free The Children is an international charity and educational partner whose organization is unique among Canadian charities in that it operates programs both domestically and internationally.
In Canada, the US, and the UK, WE Day and We Schools are initiatives of Free The Children that educate and empower young people. We Schools is a yearlong educational program that nurtures compassion in students and gives them the tools to create transformative social change. And WE Day is a series of stadium-sized events that celebrate youth making a difference in their local and global communities.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, they partner with communities to implement Adopt a Village, a holistic, five-pillar international development model designed to achieve sustainable change. Together with local leaders and families, we transform lives with solutions that are adaptive, effective and sustained long term by the community itself.
Langdon School held their event to raise money to help bring clean water to Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is a small, tropical country of savannahs, farmland and rainforests on Africa’s west coast. Despite having many natural resources, it’s estimated as many as 70% of people live in poverty, and life expectancy is among the lowest in the world.
This beautiful country is plagued with poverty and illness, made worse by an 11-year civil war that ended in 2000, and from which the country is still struggling to recover. That war destroyed vital infrastructure like school buildings, hospitals, water facilities and businesses. More recently, Sierra Leone was hard-hit by the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Sierra Leone ranks low on the United Nations Human Development Index, a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.
Along with many initiatives and projects that are in need of help in Sierra Leone, one of the biggest is clean water and sanitation. During the war, most of the wells in Sierra Leone became polluted. Since then, Free The Children has built two clean water systems in Kono District, which provides both new schools with access to clean drinking water.
As a result, the schools have seen a marked increase in the number of girls attending school, closing the gender gap. In addition, latrines have also been built at both schools to accommodate all students and teachers.
The Spring Fling Family Fun Night saw over 450 people from the Langdon Community attended the event. The night was filled with a dance, raffle prizes, super slide, crafts, carnival games, a cake walk and food. The Spring Fling was organized by the Student Council and their teacher coordinators, Chelsey Bird and Susanne Moskal.
Langdon School is supporting Clean Drinking Water for Sierra Leone through the “WH20A, Every Drop Counts” campaign and they were proud to have raised $2400 from this event.
“Thank you to all the students, teachers, administration and volunteers that assisted and donated cakes. And a special thank you goes out to Heather Brown for helping organize volunteers”, added Susanne Moskal.
