Street people win government contract Sierra Leone, a country ravaged by eleven years of civil war, was rated the poorest in the world in 2007. Its education and health systems have been decimated and no accurate statistics about disability now exist. We know, however, that because of war violence, land mines, measles, polio and other diseases caused by disrupted vaccination services, a high proportion of Sierra Leoneans have disabilities.

Since many disabled people end up scratching a living on the streets, any programme to help people out of poverty in Sierra Leone would miss the most vulnerable if it did not include disability.

An integrated training and employment support programme run by a partnership of international and local development organisations has pioneered this approach. 50 young unemployed disabled people learned skills such as blacksmithing and marketing and were then supported to start their own businesses.

One group, some of whom used to live on the streets, started a tool making cooperative which has been so successful that it won a government contract to supply agricultural implements. Their success shows that when people with disabilities get the right training and support, they can radically change their own circumstances and help meet the first Millennium Development Goal: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.