Causes: Children & Youth, Children & Youth Services, Human Service Organizations, Human Services, Youth Development Programs

Mission: Transforming communities by serving the world’s most vulnerable through education, health care, and spiritual mentoring.

Target demographics: vulnerable children and families

Direct beneficiaries per year: 10,000

Geographic areas served: Sierra Leone

Programs: Helping Children Worldwide is transforming communities by serving vulnerable children and families through education, health care, and spiritual mentoring. Since 2000, Helping Children Worldwide has been building sustainable futures for extremely vulnerable children and their families in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world. The Child Rescue Centre (CRC) was launched near the end of the ten-year Sierra Leonean civil war as a feeding program for street children who were separated from their families by the violence and chaos of the war. A small, secure building was aquired, and 40 children were rescued from the streets. Staff was hired, and the doors of the CRC officially opened on July 4,2000.In 2004, the UMC Urban Centre campus launched, and began providing safe housing for up to 70 children who were orphaned, abandoned, or removed from the home by Sierra Leone social services. An additional 100 children were rescued and placed in families with guardians in a program known as the Child Support Program. Today, the need has transitioned away from crisis housing, and the focus has shifted far beyond the walls of the main campus. Now the CRC provides access to education and health care for more than 600 children and youth in Bo, and in villages and communities around the country. We believe that family-based care is at the heart of God’s plan for children. The CRC keeps children connected to their biological or adopted kin, and provides family counseling, education, training, and access to microfinance for parents to lift families out of extreme poverty. Mercy Hospital was founded in response to the desperate need for health care in Sierra Leone. Mercy has been administering quality care in Bo since 2007 and has extended its services via outreach clinics to 55 villages surrounding Bo. When an epidemic level Ebola outbreak devastated the already fragile health care system in 2014, it left women and babies especially vulnerable. Despite the challenges caused by the crisis, Mercy has continued to serve Bo and the surrounding villages, annually providing care to more than 10,000 patients. The hospital has made great strides, earning the trust of the community as a provider of excellent health care for all, regardless of ability to pay. Health care is not free in Sierra Leone, and people are turned away from most hospitals if they cannot afford to pay, but Mercy treats all regardless of their ability to pay. HCW wholeheartedly supports Mercy’s mission to improve infant, child, and maternal health through holistic, community-focused care. We applaud Mercy’s data-driven health care programs, and the focus on professional training and staff development to better serve the Bo community.