Since the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic in 2014, Sierra Leone has experienced a critical period, given the difficult socioeconomic situation caused by post-conflict political instability, rising unemployment, and weak and corrupt government. With the incoming Covid-19 pandemic in the country since March 2020, conditions have further worsened: according to data from the Global Health Security Index, Sierra Leone ranks 92nd out of 195 countries. The economy has contracted by 2% as the pandemic has slowed all employment sectors.

COOPI is present in Sierra Leone with its Child Sponsorship Program, through which it has carried out protection, emergency education and health prevention activities. In the four schools of Freetown and Kono, where we operate, we offered support and assistance to children to ensure their access to education even during the period of forced closure due to the pandemic. Through the delivery of school supplies, hygiene kits and training sessions to learn basic hygiene practices, we helped increase school enrollment and spread basic knowledge to prevent the spread of disease.

COOPI began working in Sierra Leone in 1967. after the civil war, it carried out projects of psycho-social assistance and reintegration for children subjected to armed groups, women victims of violence and mutilated soldiers. After that, COOPI focused its intervention on the relationship between the recognition of women's rights and development, with particular importance given to the access to land.

In 2015, after the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic that caused thousands of deaths and brought the country's economy to its knees, COOPI supported children orphaned by the epidemic. Also in the same year, COOPI launched two socio-economic development projects aimed at improving the living conditions of people in rural areas: while the first aims to strengthen the cultivation of cashew nuts and therefore to improve their processing, conservation and marketing techniques, the second aims to promote activities for the production of renewable energy to provide clean electricity in schools, hospitals, cashew processing centers.