HCR joins with the Amplifying Voices through SALT Project in Sierra Leone to celebrate 3 years of strengthening communities and locally generated action with a big vision for the future.

BBN and community volunteers celebrate 3 years of AVS, Freetown, Jan 2019. (HCR UK, 2019)

There is much to celebrate! The project is actively working in 7 communities in Freetown with a strong group of volunteers from the community, clinic and the churches who regularly meet with people in their homes and their communities to listen to and appreciate their concerns, their hopes and their strengths. This way of working is generating positive local actions by the community themselves. People are seeing their potential and ability to create change in their own lives and community not waiting for outside help to fix everything. In three years we have witnessed tangible, measurable and material changes including pipe borne water, feeder road construction and community centre construction. Some intangible changes though significant have been improved dialogue between stakeholders, stronger participation in community projects and improved social capital of the community volunteers we work with. Through drama and magazine programmes on radio, our local partner, Believers Broadcasting Network (BBN) is amplifying the stories from these communities to highlight what people care about, to generate further action by other key people and encourage other communities to have hope.

With HCR, BBN is going deeper. Ransford Wright, CEO of BBN says:

We have started going further and engaged in our first community meetings. We are moving into the next phase and we have a big vision where we will reach further and deeper. With our communities we want to bring out the more hidden voices in our community, we want to address poverty and build community cohesion.

BBN (Believers Broadcast Network) is a large Christian Radio Station and counselling centre working with churches, local people and health facilities to strengthen people’s resilience, health and well- being by promoting effective engagement with service providers and using the radio to amplify Voices in the Local Community. SALT is an acronym meaning Strength, Amplify, Listen and Transformation. The project was started to support post Ebola recovery by promoting healing after the epidemic.