Sierra Leone Alliance: Picture Page

The Sierra Leone Alliance of WNY is collaborating together to “prayerfully, humbly and simply guide, shape, prioritize, direct and execute as needed the collaborative resources of the alliance members to facilitate the Mission.”

Text by Daryl Largis

As told to Kyle Patterson

Photos courtesy of Sierra Leone Alliance

The Sierra Leone Alliance is drilling clean water wells in Sierra Leone, providing villages with sanitation systems, building and supporting schools, establishing microfinance initiative to support families and communities, providing health and medical services, equipping educators and leaders and planting churches. All organizations involved are from Western New York.There are a number of organizations in Western New York that have their hands, their hearts and heads involved in Sierra Leone—this tiny little country half way around the world. We brought everyone together and asked what each was doing and they shared their expertise and the resources they had and how each organization complimented each other, as a result something unique was birthed. This Alliance was formed to say we collectively want to make a difference on behalf of the faith community of Western New York for the betterment of the country and the entire nation of Sierra Leone.

Each organization involved in the Alliance bring to the table a different aspect of what we would say is the full representation of the gospel. One being more focused on Christian education, one being more focused on micro-finance development for sustainability, one having skill and ability in bringing in and installing clean water wells, another in medical and another in pastoral training and church planting. When you bring all these things together we can drop all that in a single place and really have a significant impact in a village. As a result, we started strategizing in discrete areas of Sierra Leone around releasing those assets and mobilizing around seeing the  transformation in their communities.

 The Sierra Leone Alliance is made up of 6 organizations including Global Outreach Mission, Edunations, Houghton College, Jericho Road Ministries, The Chapel at Crosspoint and Let Them LOL.    The Alliance itself is about two years old but these partners have been there much longer. A number of things have been facilitated through the Alliance since it was formed including upwards of 30 new water wells have been drilled, several schools have been expanded, a large hospital is in the process of being rehabilitated, many churches have been started and supported and many people have gone to Sierra Leone to give of their time and talent to train and support indigenous leadership there all along the same vision of looking at the entire community and figuring out how to not only meet the needs physically but also spiritually.!

 The overall life expectancy in Sierra Leone is just 37 years. Daryl Largis of The Chapel at Crosspoint, a member of the Alliance shown here in Sierra Leone with one the children whose life was touched by the work they are doing. Sierra Leone is consistently rated as one of the poorest countries in the world.

Nearly 78% of Sierra Leone does not have access to clean sustainable water and less than 15% have proper sanitation (data provided by Government of Sierra Leone)New and improved schools are an important initiative undertaken by the Alliance