‘Happy Mums, Happy Tums’ UK Aid Match appeal raises over £200,000

Health Poverty Action’s ‘Happy Mums, Happy Tums’ appeal raised £212,505 thanks to generous donations from the public, and £100,788 of match funding from the UK government. Funds from this appeal will help improve the health and nutrition of pregnant women and children under five in Bombali and Karene districts in Sierra Leone, by improving access to health and nutrition services for families in remote villages. For those of you who gave to our appeal – thank you – it made a HUGE difference!

This appeal, which ran from October to December 2019, saw our supporters coming together to fundraise their hearts out, anything from running a half-marathon to singing carols around London Underground stations.

Despite navigating the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic, this project has already started to support around 1,179 mothers and 1,267 children across hard-to-reach villages in Sierra Leone.
So far, by partnering with local communities, we’ve:

• Facilitated women’s group meetings to spark discussions on nutrition and health. The groups participated in radio programmes and helped to raise awareness of nutrition in their communities.
• Organised nutrition training for 15 Community Health Workers (CHWs), who are respected members of the community working with local health clinics in remote villages.
• Trained 58 health workers to support and supervise CHWs and learned how to reach out to communities to monitor and improve nutrition.
• Passed along 35 bicycles to CHWs so they can share their knowledge on nutrition with more families, and spot early signs of malnutrition.

From all of us at Health Poverty Action – thank you for supporting our ‘Happy Mums, Happy Tums’ appeal. We’ll look forward to updating you on the fantastic achievements of our team in Sierra Leone and our local community partners!