Partnership and Gratitude in 2021

Last year, we ended the year by reflecting on a handful of our accomplishments and things that we were grateful for during such a challenging year.  It was an activity that forced us to stop dwelling on the difficulties and constant pivoting, and instead allowed us to realize that the community-led nature of our work is what makes OneVillage Partners unique, successful, and sustainable during times of change.  So, in the spirit of continuing to share our good news, we once again want to share with you our favorite accomplishments from this past year.

1) We partnered with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health to bring COVID-19 vaccines to 24 rural communities. We are incredibly proud to say that through this partnership, over 2,500 people from our partner communities have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

2) Our community partners completed development projects this year that are improving agricultural yields, increasing access to clean water and sanitation facilities, and improving community democratic governance for over 5,000 people.

We’re especially excited about the community of Bandajuma, whose clean water project was the fastest project to be completed by any of our partners!  Volunteer-leaders in Bandajuma led their community through a water well rehabilitation and construction project. After the project was completed, there were leftover construction materials, and the community collectively decided to use them to rehabilitate one more additional water well. Now that’s what we call social cohesion!  

3) We expanded the Nurturing Opportunities for Women program and introduced a third phase that focuses on increasing agricultural business skills for participants.

If you’ve been following our work this year, then you’ve heard that this year we piloted a third phase of the NOW program – NOW: Agribusiness Skills.  NOW program graduates told us that they wanted to continue their business skills training and apply it to their work in agriculture to increase their farming yields.  The pilot has nearly 175 women participants from across six different communities. Collectively, these women have cultivated over 26 acres of farmland so far! 

4) We deepened our local governance work by building relationships and bridging the gaps between community leaders and local government.

The first cohort of our Lead program completed their projects.  We highlighted one at this year’s Partner Breakfast – did you see the video that showcases the community of Grima’s new maternal health clinic?  Check it out here. Our second cohort in the program include volunteer-leaders from six different communities.  These individuals worked together to increase the involvement from their communities and local government and designed proposals for regional development projects.  OneVillage Partners sought even further involvement and buy-in from local government officials, who were involved in the proposal scoring and selection process. The communities whose proposals were chosen for funding will be building primary and secondary schools and rehabilitating and expanding health clinics. We’re looking forward to sharing progress on the selected projects in 2022. 

5) We expanded to two new community partners from our new Daru hub office, training volunteer-leaders like Musa Jusu, pictured left, to lead community development projects. What’s more, we laid the ground work to double our reach in this region in the coming year.

We are so grateful to all of our partners around the world who have supported OneVillage Partners this past year.  Our team and our community ­partners are eager to get to work on all the exciting plans we have for the new year, and we hope you’ll stick around in 2022 to join us and our community partners in activating community transformation.

Want to make a gift this holiday season?  There are many ways to donate – click here to learn more!