Sierra Leone
The programme is being developed by VSO in partnership with the YMCA. The January programme is based
in 2 cities in Eastern Sierra Leone – Bo and Kenema – which are about 1 hour apart by road. The focus of the programme is on advocacy for young people and women, volunteers will support organisations to develop and implement advocacy strategies; arrange community radio debates about the importance of young people’s participation and give basic media training to local young people to enable them to participate in these; to produce newsletters highlighting good practice; and to develop organisations use of social media so they can better advocate for young people and women.
Community Education by John S Kallon Community education is one of the strategies used to educate our different communities on their rights and
responsibilities, attitudinal change and above all how they should stay out of violence and make sure they maintain peace in their communities at all times. This particular programme is conducted by a set of trained young people called the Peer educators. They are drawn from different social youth organisations based within the city of Bo. These young people have been trained by the young man’s Christian association (YMCA), and funded by the European Union governance programme.
The YMCA, in partnership with the GX programme, organised a community talk show on the topic ‘rights and responsibilities’. This formed part of the Youth Action Sierra Leone team objectives to ‘advocate for young people to be involved in decision making and policy creation’. If young people do not know what their rights and responsibilities are then they won’t be involved in any decision making and policy creation. Because these young people are not conscious of these rights and their responsibilities they have been known to be violent and irresponsible. But with this kind of education they (young people) can now act responsibly and change the negative mind sets of young people to a positive attitude, and thus enhance perfect peace in society.
Since I am one of the trained civic peer educators, and also a national volunteer I organised to conduct a 
community talk show at the kandeh Town market square on the 20th February. The estimated attendance was 60 young men and women as well as some community stakeholders such as the councillor for ward 232 (George Bameh), community elders such as Mr Von Tucker, Mr Freeman, the interim community chief, the mammy queen to name but a few.
The session was particularly educative because there were many contributions made by the young people in attendance. Statements were also made by Christian Alie (chairman of the YMCA South), Katy Chadwick (team supervisor) and the Councillor. The young people present vowed to keep to these rights and responsibilities, to be peaceful in their gatherings and to stay out of violence.
