Background Information
In a country where the pension schemes are negligible and culturally people have had to rely on their offspring to care for them and support them through their old age, Sierra Leone now finds itself in a new and unprecedented era. An era where a lot of elderly people find themselves deprived of the care of the younger generation due to the massive death tolls in the recent past caused by the ten+ years of rebel war, mass migration of the younger generation to find a better life, the Ebola crisis, mud slides, floods and the high unemployment rate among the young. All of these have had not only devastating effects on our economy, but also on our younger generation’s ability to care for their elderly.
In the light of this, Sierra Leone finds itself today in a situation where the senior citizens have become the most underprivileged of society and in a lot of cases completely neglected, deprived, forgotten and abandoned to live a life of squalor or to live in abject poverty without health care, adequate housing and sometimes even food. Sometimes people in their 70’s and 80’s have to bear the financial and physical burden of raising their grandchildren whose parents were killed during the rebel war or in some other of the numerous national disasters that have been part of our recent past.
Against this background, DL4SL was formed to provide initiatives for the sustainable development and improvement of the
standard of living for senior citizens and the underprivileged in Sierra Leone.
Problem Situation
According to the Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census 3.5 per cent (246,284) of the total population is aged 65 and over.
Most of the elderly population are poor and not formally educated. A lot of them have never held a formal job and the majority are engaged in subsistence agriculture and petty trading. Areas in which there are no specified retirement age or benefits.
The well-being of the majority of the elderly population is affected by illiteracy, poverty, disability and sickness
After years of a brutal civil war in Sierra Leone, the Ebola crisis and natural disasters, many aspects of the traditional social structure have been destroyed. Consequently, many old people have now been abandoned or have no surviving family members to help take care of them.
As they are no longer able to work, they now have no regular income or means of support and are forced to live in abject poverty and neglect.