Honouring the Organizations that Heal, Build, and Uplift: Celebrating Impact Makers in Sierra Leone

As Sierra Leone marked its 64th Independence Day, we chose to celebrate not just the past but the future of Sierra Leone which is being shaped by impactful individuals and organizations.

Across the country, powerful changes are being made thanks to some organizations committed to the progress, dignity, and transformation of Sierra Leone. From rebuilding communities from scratch to offering profound healthcare to Sierra Leoneans, these organizations are doing more than aid work. They are helping restore independence, the kind that shows up in classrooms, clinics, and communities.

We are recognising these changemakers for their tireless efforts to rewrite Sierra Leone’s history with hope, equity, and opportunity at its core. This Independence Day, we celebrate the people and organizations who are showing what it really is like to uplift others.

About the Sierra Leone Independence Day 2025 Honors List

The 2025 Honors List is presented by VR&C Marketing Company, Sierra Leone’s premier PR, communications, and digital marketing strategist in partnership with SwitSalone, Sierra Leone’s leading online news and entertainment platform. It was founded in 2005 by Vickie Remoe and serves as a portal for both local and international communities. The platform is known for its coverage of Sierra Leonean news and entertainment, and it also features articles and opinions on a range of topics, including business, culture, and politics.

Mercy Ships

In a world where access to safe, affordable surgical care remains out of reach for millions of people, Mercy Ships has made sure to lessen the problem. Founded in 1978 by Don Stephens, an American humanitarian inspired by the biblical example of serving the poor, Mercy Ships began with a bold mission: to bring free, world-class surgical care to some of the world’s most underserved communities through hospital ships staffed by volunteer healthcare professionals.

Mercy Ships first docked in Sierra Leone is 1992, at a time when the country was grippling with the early stages of a brutal civil war. Even then, the organization’s response was one of unwavering support not retreat. Over the decades, through war, disease outbreaks, and national recovery efforts, Mercy Ships has returned multiple times, offering not just surgeries but renewed hope.

The support has deepened over the years as a formal partnership was established with the government of Sierra Leone in their arrival in 1992, marking the beginning of a long term relationship built on mutual trust and a shared goal of strengthening surgical care in Sierra Leone. Since then, Mercy Ships has provided thousands of free, life changing surgeries and trained thousands of health care professionals.

In August 2024, the Global Mercy, the world’s largest civilian hospital ship made by Mercy Ships, was welcomed to Freetown after departing in June that year to observe a brief annual maintenance period. Their return marked a renewed partnership between the organization and the Government of Sierra Leone.

Before leaving in June 2024, Global Mercy healthcare professionals had spent a 10-month period carrying out 1,979 transformative surgeries for 1,728 patients including cleft lip and palate repairs, orthopedic corrections, tumour removals, and other procedures that are often unavailable or unaffordable in Sierra Leone’s fragile healthcare system. In addition to surgical care, 145 Sierra Leonean healthcare professionals received hands-on training on board, which is part of Mercy Ship’s long-term commitment to strengthening local capacity for safe surgery within the country.

Since 2023, Mercy Ships has delivered more than 2,470 free surgeries and trained over 230 medical workers in Sierra Leone.

In partnership with the Ministry of Health and the University of Sierra Leone, Mercy Ships is not only addressing urgent surgical needs, including maxillofacial, pediatric orthopaedic, plastic, and eye surgeries but also strengthening the country’s healthcare workforce through accredited educational programs and clinical placements.

With a new five-year agreement in place through 2030, Mercy Ships is helping build a more resilient healthcare system in Sierra Leone ensuring long-term access to safe, affordable surgical care.

In a nation that has faced enormous health challenges, Mercy Ships remains a symbol of steadfast partnership and transformative care. Their ship may eventually sail to other shores, but their legacy in Sierra Leone is anchored deeply in healed bodies, empowered professionals, and a shared belief that access to healthcare is a human right, not a privilege.

Honouring the Organizations that Heal, Build, and Uplift: Celebrating Impact Makers in Sierra Leone

The Global Mercy Ship when it arrived in Sierra Leone in 2024

Patient, Borbor, looking at himself after a successful surgery to remove his goitre on the Global Mercy Ship

Before (left) and after (right) Global Mercy patient, Abass’s surgery to remove a tumour on his right arm

A Sierra Leonean physiotherapist helping a patient on the Global Mercy

Global Mercy patient, Francis, with some healthcare staff after his facial surgery for an infection that scarred his face as a baby

Global Ship patient Maedesu with a doctor after her cleft-lip surgery

Partners in Health SL

Honouring the Organizations that Heal, Build, and Uplift: Celebrating Impact Makers in Sierra Leone

When Sierra Leone was gripped by the devastating Ebola outbreak in 2014, few organizations rushed in. Most were pulling out. But Partners in Health (PIH), founded in 1987 by the late Dr. Paul Framer, Ophelia Dahl, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, Todd McCormack, and the late Tom White, was built on a different kind of ethic. One that refuses to turn away from suffering, especially when the world’s most vulnerable are in crisis.

It was in the midst of the Ebola epidemic that PIH Sierra Leone was born. In collaboration with the Sierra Leonean Government, PIH arrived not only in response to the emergency, but to help rebuild an entire health system that had been left fractured by years of neglect, war, and epidemic trauma. From day one, PIH did not come with a quick-fix solution. They came to stay.

PIH is driven by the belief that health is a human right, which was pioneered by Dr. Farmer. His vision of delivering quality healthcare to the world’s poorest communities has inspired a global movement for health equity.

Operating on the principle that health is a human right, PIH Sierra Leone has grown into one of the country’s most impactful health organizations. While other emergency responders left after Ebola faded from headlines, PIH dug deeper. They officially registered in Sierra Leone, making a long-term commitment to transform the public health landscape by strengthening it from within.

Today, PIH works in partnership with the government to rebuild and strengthen Sierra Leone’s health system, especially in areas like Kono District and the capital, Freetown.

Across six facilities and three districts, PIH is setting new standards. From supporting the Wellbody Clinic and Koidu Government Hospital to revitalising Lakka TB Hospital and Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital, their work covers everything from maternal care to mental health and drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Their presence in Sierra Leone has made a significant impact. The Koidu Government Hospital has seen a 50% reduction in stillbirths. There has been a 99.9% retention rate for HIV patients as well as zero maternal deaths at Wellbody Clinic in four years. PIH has also helped the Lakka Hospital achieve one of the world’s highest TB cure rates by introducing never-before-available care for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

With Sierra Leone facing some of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates and an extreme shortage of trained clinicians, PIH is contributing to solving the problem by building the Maternal Centre for Excellence (MCE), which is set to open in January 2026.

The facility, which will be located on the exit of the Koidu Government Hospital campus, will increase the current 48-bed maternal ward and special care baby unit to a 120-bed centre that includes a cutting-edge neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The creation of this centre will radically reduce maternal mortality rates in the country.

PIH has chosen to invest in people, train local professionals, and challenge the notion that high-quality care is only for the privileged. Their comprehensive model combines clinical excellence with social support like food, housing, and transportation, ensuring no patient is left behind.

Today, Partners in Health Sierra Leone continues to bring the best global expertise to the most remote corners of the country. They are helping fight tuberculosis and child malnutrition to ensuring that pregnant women in rural areas can give birth safely.

Through it all, their mission remains clear. To deliver care with dignity, rebuild health systems with justice, and prove that no one is too poor to deserve the best healthcare.

PIH team member with a mother and child in Sierra Leone/ image by Partners in Health

PIH member leading an adult literacy class with ebola survivors/picture by Jon Lascher & Partners in Health

Nurses being trained under the emergency nurse training programme at the Koidu Government Hospital

A family at the PIH Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital

A nurse working with PIH examining a patient

The progress of the Maternal Centre for Excellence/ image from PIH Sierra Leone Instagram

Schools for Salone

In the early 2000s, Sierra Leone was emerging from a decade-long civil war. The conflict had destroyed the nation’s infrastructure, especially its education system. Schools were burned, abandoned, and crumbling while a generation of children had lost access to learning. But amid that darkness, a single conversation sparked a movement of restoration and hope.

In 2004, former Peace Corps Volunteer Cindy Nofziger returned to Sierra Leone, a country she had once called home, to find schools destroyed and communities still reeling from civil war. There, she reconnected with her friend and former colleague, John Sesay, whose village school had been destroyed during the war. He asked her a simple but profound question: “Can you help us rebuild our school?” Cindy said yes.

That moment gave birth to Schools for Salone, a US based nonprofit committed to rebuilding education in Sierra Leone one community at a time. With no formal obligation to return, Cindy could have walked away. Instead, she doubled down because she believed rebuilding a school could help rebuild the future.

Since constructing its first school in 2005, Schools for Salone has partnered with Sierra Leonean communities to build 47 schools and 3 libraries, ensuring children have safe, supported environments to learn and thrive. Their work is deeply collaborative rooted in the belief that lasting change starts with local ownership.

Schools for Salone always works with local organizations within the country. In partnership with the Programme for Children (PFC), they have helped rebuild and expand education in hard-to-reach areas. Together, they have ensured that thousands of children across Tonkolili, Bo, and Western Area Districts now have safe, supportive places to learn.

But building classrooms was just the beginning. SfS also provides scholarships, teacher training,learning materials, teacher certification programmes, support to keep children in school, especially girls.

Through their partnership with Uman Tok, they help address one of the biggest barriers in girls’ education, that is, menstrual hygiene. Since 2020, SfS and Uman Tok have produced and distributed 50,000 reusable pads and conducted reproductive education for girls and boys alike. The result? No teenage pregnancies and near-zero absenteeism due to periods in their partner schools.

In 2024, they distributed over 200 bicycles in partnership with the Village Bicycle Project, helping students in remote villages get to school on time, reducing commute times and making education more accessible.

In April 2025, they helped open Lengekoro Senior Secondary School, now one of the 17 high schools in Koinadugu, a district with some of the lowest secondary school enrollment rates in Sierra Leone. Thanks to community determination and generous donors, what began in a thatched hut is now a beacon of hope.

What makes Schools for Salone extraordinary is not just what they do, it’s why they do it. They have no corporate obligation, no external incentive to remain in Sierra Leone. Yet year after year, they continue to invest in some of the country’s most underserved communities, driven purely by the belief that every child deserves the chance to learn, to dream, and to thrive.

For Schools for Salone, it’s never been about charity. It’s about partnership, dignity, and hope. And more than 20 years after a single conversation gave birth to a vision, that hope continues to grow one school, one teacher, one child at a time.