So I’ve been here 4 weeks now – weird. Does it seem like that long since I saw you lot in London last?! It’s one of them cases of it not feelin like that long, but when I think about being in London, it feels like it was light years ago.

Moonie arrives tonight…am very excited about that. As is half of Freetown cos he’s carried goodies for them from London..!! Yey!

Things have started to get quite hectic at work…YAPAD (Youth Alliance for Peace and Development), the organisation that I’m working for, has just received quite a bit of funding from the Princess Diana Memorial Fund to carry out a three year Advocacy programme…which is what I’m working on (my title is Advocacy Advisor). I got told last week that I’ve got just under 3 weeks to plan a 5 day Advocacy Training Workshop. So yup that’s keeping me on my toes, to say the least! I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting YAPAD’s member organisations (there are 40 in the Alliance)…there are SO many youth organisations here, although “youth” is the UN definition which is 16 to 35…that’s over 75% of the Sierra Leonean population = LOTS OF PEOPLE. Some of the organisations are amazing, and seeing what they’ve achieved with young people since the war is truly inspirational.

My biggest frustration at the moment, is that a lot of the young people who were effected by the war (either being child combatants, or maimed, or had family members killed in the war), are now in skills training, so they’re learning tailoring, or batik, or some kind of construction or woodwork…which is great. Except, there’s no market for their end products. There are thousands, literally, thousands of hairdressers here with no work. URGH. Development issues. Development agencies – DIVERSIFY PLEASE!!!!

Anyways, I have a funny feelin that my generator is about to run out of fuel, so I better sign out here, and save this, so I can post it online tomorrow…

Till next time…..! Xx

Sun Oct 8th 2006 (ok, so I'm still behind, but more blogs to come, promise, promise!)