At "hoop" we have a big heart for children and we feel bad about inequality in the world.
We have set up a non profit organisation in Sierra Leone to support the most vulnerable children. Sierra Leone is a beautiful country on the southwest coast of Africa and is one of the poorest countries in the world. Depending of the definition of the poverty line 43% ($1/day) to 93% ($5/day) of the people live in poverty. From 1991 till 2002 there was the Sierra Leone Civil War, which has left a lot of damage. We chose for Sierra Leone because we want to help the country with its growth and want to reach the most vulnerable children in the country. As my brother-in-law, a co-founder of the foundation, has Sierra Leonean roots, we have some local contacts which makes the coordination easier and moreover my sister-in-law and brother-in- law speak the native language which will help for a good follow-up.
The foundation is named after my grand mother Suzanna, she is 95 years old and always took kids in need in her home. We want her spirit and positive, friendly personality to live further in this initiative.
With the Suzanne Foundation we want to support vulnerable children and their family.
We believe every child has the right to go to school, eat a meal every day and have access to urgent medical treatment if needed.
The Suzanna Foundation will focus on children in the slums who, despite school fees are free and offered by government, do not have the possibility to go to school because of the price of school books and uniforms. Often these children contribute to the income of the family by begging or selling stuff in the streets, so their activity is also important for the income of the family.
We want to help the family with the registration of the kids in school, offer schoolbooks and uniforms. And to compensate the loss of income from the child, we will offer a food pick-up every week for the family (f.e. bag of rice, herbs, sugar, oil, vegetables,...)
We will try to reserve a part of the donations for urgent medical treatment for children who are registered in our program, in case they get sick with malaria or other treatable diseases.
We believe the most important thing for the children is the love of family, friends and loved ones. Most of the children we support have parents with disabilities or live in foster families or big 1-parent families with low to no income. With our initiative we want the children to stay in their own family and also encourage foster families who care for children selflessly and support them by giving them the best chances for their own children and foster children.
Providing an education for children in vulnerable familial situations as the ones mentioned above, will help improve their outlook in life with a more stable future and lesser chances for them to getting involved in criminal activities such theft, drug trafficking or other dangerous crimes.
We have also a long term vision to expand our activities and support communities but we keep this is for a future blog article ;-)