Institute member Becky Haywood volunteered to work in Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis and is now raising money for children orphaned by the disease. She said: “Over Christmas and the New Year I spent five weeks in Sierra Leone, volunteering as part of the UK response to the crisis in West Africa. I was assigned to the Public Health England laboratory based in Makeni, Sierra Leone’s fourth largest city.
“The PHE laboratory had only been fully operational for a week when we arrived but was already receiving twice-daily sample deliveries from the community hospitals, plus the samples directly from the treatment centre. When stepping outside the treatment centre laboratory, I was immediately struck by the amount of poverty around me, but taken aback by the sense of community and how volunteers and local people pulled together.
“Since returning to the UK, I have wanted to continue to help in some way, and have now reached out to a charity called Street Child (www.street-child.co.uk) to begin coordinating the collection of used stamps. Street Child is a UK-based charity that works primarily in Sierra Leone (recently extending into Liberia) helping orphaned or abandoned children into long-term, stable education. Just a kilo of used stamps can fetch up to £50 wholesale. With a year’s education costing just £36, these little squares of paper, which would normally be thrown away, can have a huge impact on a child’s future.”
If you think you could help by arranging to place a collection box in your workplace or elsewhere, please contact Becky at the email address below.
[email protected]