Sherbro Foundation is honored to announce that the Procter & Gamble Alumni Foundation Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation has awarded us a grant to expand our transformative Let Them Earn project in Sierra Leone. With this funding, 50 more Bumpeh Chiefdom village farmers (majority women) can replicate the success of early participants improving their incomes, livelihoods, and futures.
Through our local partner CCET-SL (Center for Community Empowerment & Transformation—Sierra Leone), Let Them Earn provides smallholder farmers with:
- Interest-free loans to expand their operations
- Year-round training on improved farming practices
- Classes on basic numeracy and small business management
After covering operating costs, setting aside family food, and repaying their loans, participants have net cash income to improve daily life and reinvest in their farms.
“This grant is a big leap forward that’s adding momentum to what we’re doing with village farmers,” said Bumpeh Chiefdom Paramount Chief Charles Caulker. below right with women farmers. “I want to create a culture of increased productivity where farmers continue to grow more, earn more, and villages lead their own development. I’m deeply grateful to the P&G Alumni Foundation for standing behind us with their support.”
Transforming Lives Through Economic Empowerment
Musu Koroma, below, a mother of three, was one of the first farmers to join Let Them Earn. Last month, she showed me how new earnings from her loan changed her life. She reinforced her mud brick house with strong concrete stucco, safeguarding it for years to come from erosion and collapse in Sierra Leone’s heavy monsoon rains. She installed sturdy hardwood doors and windows that keep out rain and mosquitoes. With pride and confidence, Musu is now sending her son to secondary school in a larger town.
With earnings from her three-acre farm, Musu Koroma, above left, strengthened her house, before like the mud brick house next door.
“Let Them Earn has helped me so much,” Musu said. “I can now do things I never thought possible.”
Results Speak for Themselves
The impact has been dramatic. Families are sending children and grandchildren for higher levels of education. They have more food and can afford protein like fish, important for child development and disease resistance. Homes become safe and healthy places to live with dignity. Villages are becoming debt-free, and communities are rediscovering hope.
Aminata Sandy, above joined Let Them Earn after losing both her husband and the brother-in-law she became dependent on. With her loan, she hired labor for her farm, secured food for her children, and paid their school fees. As the loan recipient, she manages her farm and a household of eight. She’s repaid most of her loan, with the remainder coming with the year-end harvest.
Aminata confidently stood up in front of her village and Paramount Chief Caulker to tell her story. When women are direct loan recipients, Let Them Earn empowers them to make farm and financial decisions. They’ve gained respect and a voice in managing their village.
Microfinance schemes in rural areas frequently fail. Our partner CCET-SL proudly reported 95+% of year one loans were repaid with the combination of interest-free loans and year-round training tailored to farmer needs. Year two Let Them Earn loan repayment promises to reach the same high level. Repaid loans are reloaned to the next group of farmers eager to improve their lives.
Why This Approach Works
After 14 years working with Sierra Leone, we’ve learned a vital truth: sustainable development doesn’t begin with what you construct — it begins with who you empower.
Schools, wells, and roads are important, but villages can’t develop or sustain growth unless individuals become economically self-reliant. Lasting change happens when you invest directly in people, giving them the means and skills to lift themselves out of poverty.
The Let Them Earn program brings together what truly works: financial access, practical skills, and local empowerment—helping farmers move from subsistence living to building viable, income-generating small businesses. Loans are repaid on schedules that match farm harvests.
Yes, it’s riskier to provide loans to subsistence farmers and small traders. It’s time-intensive to deliver hands-on training in remote villages and provide ongoing coaching. But this is what actually works. This is what moves people and entire communities beyond survival mode to genuine economic opportunity.
Sherbro Foundation sends our deep thanks to the P&G Alumni Foundation for their continued confidence and partnership in Let Them Earn. Year three of the project will bring even greater growth and opportunity to the villages of Bumpeh Chiefdom.
For program details: https://conta.cc/4oVfeom
You can help support Sierra Leone farmers: https://sherbrofoundation.org/donate/
For Mustakin, this work transcends employment. “I’m here to create my own legacy,” he tells us. His commitment to the people of Bumpeh Chiefdom runs deep, driving him to push through the daily challenges of rural development work. Like getting to project sites on roads, left, he found even his motorbike had trouble passing in the rainy season.
Tutorial Programs
Primary School Tutorials
Vocational Scholarships
Teacher Training Scholarships
Nursing & University Scholarships
Izzy is back in school now to avoid this fate. She’s in a vocational course teaching her electrical wiring. She chose that because it will lead to a wage-paying job with a future She’ll be poised on the leading edge of Sierra Leone’s solar revolution.
She was an 11th grade student aimlessly drifting in a conventional school that didn’t offer much to a student like her. Izzy (short for Ismatu) lost first one parent, then the other. She lives with her grandmother, helping in her catering business, which in rural Rotifunk, is down more than up.
Now she’s learning a skill that will set her up in a trade with opportunities, as Sierra Leone’s construction industry grows and electrical power takes off.
When Izzy was selected for one of the first 12 Bumpeh Chiefdom positions at the new technical institute in the district capital Moyamba, she saw electrical wiring was a course option. She didn’t hesitate.
Easy Solar is one company bringing small solar units to rural African households. It installs solar panels with as little as 25 to 50 watts capacity, enough to run a couple LED lights and charge phones, plug in a radio or another small device.
The above solar mini-grid is an example of many being installed in rural Sierra Leone.
We’re celebrating the life of Dr. Winifred Smith Bradford (October 20, 1922 – July 19, 2020), a remarkable woman who dedicated herself to serving women and children around the world.
Dr. Smith’s time at Yale wasn’t for naught. There she met the love of her life and partner in service, Lester Bradford, a forestry major. Her goal of being a missionary doctor was undeterred and just changed geography to Africa – Sierra Leone, West Africa. The United Brethren in Christ (UBC), an arm of the Methodist Church, first sent her to prepare at the London School of Tropical Medicine.
Bumpeh Chiefdom’s government-run health units are staffed by a community health nurse, usually operating alone, who diagnoses and treats common infectious disease like malaria and diarrhea, provides pre/postnatal care for pregnant women and serves as midwife to deliver babies. They vaccinate babies and monitor for malnutrition. They can provide family planning services, basic first aid like stitching wounds and screen for chronic disease for referral, like hypertension and diabetes.
Rural areas like Bumpeh Chiefdom have reported few, if any, cases. Life largely takes place outside where breeze offers natural dilution.
Chiefdom meetings now take place with distancing and masks.
Trainers emphasized practical demonstrations, with participants practicing proper handwashing and mask use.
Over 9000 Sherbro Foundation funded masks were distributed so residents can comply with chiefdom (and now government) requirements.
195 hand washing stations and soap were also given to village leaders for their public places. With no running water and few wells, this encourages handwashing where people convene.
“I am very much delighted for the completion of the training of our section safety teams. I followed the process with keen interest and I am tremendously satisfied with the accomplishments. My section chiefs and their people constantly called me and expressed appreciation for the exercise while it was on.”
Our partner CCET-SL resumed its special all-day 12th grade school in its education center July 1, preparing Rotifunk’s graduating students for their national exam. Masks and distancing required.
Sherbro Foundation is paying for small daily stipends for checkpoint volunteers to buy food and water from villagers during their 12 hour shifts away from home.
Bumpeh Chiefdom, Sierra Leone, took immediate action in April against Covid-19 before any confirmed case reached them — and has kept the virus out so far. But it’s quickly spreading all around them.
We know Covid-19 is a stealth virus and hard to control. But Bumpeh Chiefdom has a head start, learning from its Ebola ordeal. Covid-19 starts as a traveler’s disease, first carried in by air travelers from infected countries. Sierra Leone has only limited flights and directly quarantined all arriving air passengers in Freetown throughout March; starting in February, for passengers originating in China.
But the April 17 report shows nearly a doubling of cases from 15 to 26. Most new cases are reported linked to the second case; they worked at the same hospital. But the doctor’s husband rightfully said it’s time to concentrate on community transmission. She appears to have been infected by community transfer. Her family, housekeepers and close hospital work associates have tested negative, while hospital nurses with little to no contact with her tested positive this week. They could have been community-exposed as the doctor was. As was the lab technician.
The government’s control program now limits travel to within each of its 16 districts, set a 9 pm to 6 am curfew, limits public-sector business hours (the largest employer) and stresses staying at home wherever possible. Hand washing and social distancing are emphasized. They continue contact tracing and quarantines, but that will soon outstrip capacity to handle new cases.
Social distancing is initially hard to get used to. The weekly women’s small grant meeting, above, spread out, but not quite six feet. Chief not only stopped gatherings, but leads by example, applying the six-foot rule in his own interactions. Our partner CCET-SL leaders do the same. Hand-washing stations are set up in public places, and people urged to wash hands at home.
Outside traders bring in fish, the main protein source for most.
They also become part of the savings plan of the new Women’s Small Grant Program, where women deposit part of each week’s earnings, left.
Under the Small Grant and Savings Program, women should be able to increase the size of their trading business with their small grant and the resulting income they earn. And with required savings, they’ll have another windfall at the end of the year.
With her remaining Le200,000 from the grant, Yeama bought cassava, a starchy tuber, and made foo foo, left, traditionally eaten on Saturday with a meat soup.
Sherbro Foundation 