Seven Islanders have recently returned from a 10 day trip to the West African state of Sierra Leone, visiting two aid projects run by partners of Cafod and Christian Aid. Each focuses on providing food for small-scale farmers, prioritising work with women and youth. Each project has received about ?250,000 over three years from Tynwald’s Overseas Aid Committee. Sierra Leone remains one of the poorest countries in the world, despite a decade of recovery following the end of a brutal ten-year civil war throughout the 1990s. One child in five doesn’t make it to their fifth birthday, and half the population is under-nourished. They sailed to remote locations on wide rivers, passing men paddling in canoes of hollowed-out tree trunks, perhaps as they did 10,000 years ago. They visited fields and nurseries, met local Chiefs, and joined in discussions in the open-air village meeting places. At one location, Mano Junction, the group visited a valley which had recently been cleared and drained, where okra, groundnuts and maize were beginning to grow. Phil Craine, Christian Aid’s representative on the Island, said “We met some truly inspiring people dedicated to improving the lives of poor and vulnerable people. We shared the delight of Patricia, a young mother, maybe in her late twenties, as she proudly announced she could now read and to prove it promptly spelled out her name. We saw too that solid community development work takes time, and that our partners can achieve so much more – and more sustainably - over a full three years, and we thank the Overseas Aid Committee for enabling this.” There is a chance to hear and see more by coming along to ‘Stories from Sierra Leone’, at Kirk Braddan church hall on Friday 25 March, at 7.30pm. Admission is free, and there’ll be a chance to ask questions and judge for yourself whether aid is working. Ends