Sherbro Foundation Sierra Leone

Sherbro Foundation is an amazing organization for what it has accomplished with young girls in Sierra Leone with so little financial support. The first young women provided an education are now entering college with dreams of professional careers. Schools have been built, qualified teachers hired, computer and other technical support provided and monitoring and supervision conducted. The Executive Director is Arlene Golembiewski, a former Peace Corps volunteer in this location, who is dedicated to raising the economic level of the area through education, agricultural improvements to fund the education and community development. She travels to Sierra Leone at her own cost. Further, she recently was awarded the Sargent Shriver Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Award for her inspiring efforts on behalf of the Sherbro Foundation.

Pay attention to this organization and Arlene's efforts - doing the right thing in the right places.

martha sullivan

I support Sherbro Foundation of Sierra Leone and I have asked my friends to support it due to the high level of integrity and organizational skills of its founder: Arlene Golembiewski who I personally know for more than 10 years as a dear neighbor and a coworker at P&G. Arlene after a long and successful career returned to where she started as a Peace Corp in Sierra Leone in her early 20s reconnecting with the local people. There she found her next act in life pouring all her energy, perseverance and skills to develop programs with clear and measurable goals; focused on education and local economic empowerment with high local involvement at each step.
I do prefer to support small social enterprises since have targeted objectives and well established connections with the local people.
I have been deeply impressed by the effective actions quickly implemented by Paramount Chief Caulker thanks also to the funds raised by Arlene that helped minimize the spread of Ebola in the Chiefdom.
This is an organization worth to support since delivering real results to the people.

We were both Peace Corps Volunteers in the Bumpeh Chiefdom and know firsthand how valuable this type of foundational work helps to directly help the people there to move beyond their day to day survival. It is a remote and difficult area to get to, and little aid reaches the villages. The youth, especially girls, should have more opportunities, and the Sherbro Foundation is one of the few organizations working to get involved at the community level to make a change person by person. Jerome Armstrong & Shashi Rao

The Sherbro Foundation has, and continues to establish creative, sustainable programs to help the people, especially females, of Bumpeh Chiefdom.

Education and empowerment are at the heart of the programs up and running right now, each providing members of the community with an opportunity to earn a wage sufficient to provide their family with food, shelter and an education. School in Sierra Leone is not free – a family must pay school fees each year for a child to attend classes. In a area that saw its villages burn and its children forced into military service during the brutal “blood diamond” civil war, an area then thrown into crisis with the threat of Ebola, economic stability, education were thrown to the wayside. Subsistence farming, trying to provide for ones family on $1 a day or less was reality.

The Sherbro Foundation provided a way out of the past into the future: a community computer center, vegetable growing, a newborn education fund, scholarships for girls and a village orchard. All creative, empowering programs to help individuals and the community grow and prosper.

As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in nearby Kargboro Chiefdom, I know first hand how valuable these programs are and how much they can provide. I know that funds raised by the Sherbro Foundation are used exclusively for these programs. I know that Chief Caulker is a respected, trusted and visionary leader.

For these and many other reasons I wholeheartedly support the work of the Sherbro Foundation and would urge others to support it as well.

The Sherbro Foundation has been doing a tremendous amount of good for the people of Sierra Leone especially the young girls who without the support of the Sherbro Foundation would likely have an extremely dim even tragic future. The grant to support equipping Rotifunk’s new community computer center is a classic example of “teaching people how to fish instead of giving them a fish.” The computer and printing capability this grant would provide would enable the center to be the only computer and printing resource within a 3 hour ride. This will generate funds to enable a community education center to be established. This grant will go a long way toward creating an element of self-sufficiency for the people of Rotifunk.

I support Sherbro Foundation of Sierra Leone because: 1) it is achieving measurable results in providing increased education for girls; 2) there is strong local support and involvement through the leadership of Paramount Chief Caulker; 3) the unique Newborn Baby Project ensures that an infant's future secondary school fees begin to accumulate through the planting of a fruit producing tree upon a child's birth; and 4) I am personally aware of the Foundation president's dedication, careful oversight of resources, and commitment to full local involvement in all in all of the Foundation's programs.

I heartily support Sherbro Foundation's work in impoverished Sierra Leone because it has quickly become successful by doing so much with so little -- except the dedication of its volunteers.
The strong partnership with Bumpeh Chiefdom's leaders and its own volunteer nonprofit results in community-led programs that meet the people's needs. And that means they're reaching even the most-remote and needy villages overlooked by all other aid.
Local ideas using local resources are proving to the country's government that they are sustainable and worth replicating. I am proud to be a Sherbro Foundation board member.