Making Lemonade: A Micro-Grant Program for Sierra Leone

Nancy Peddle lived next door to Sierra Leone’s Minister of Defense, whose house was fired on for hours during the bloody coup of 1996.

Peddle, who still lives in the country and runs a micro-grant program called the LemonAid Fund, writes in response to my questions while the electricity is running. Which, of course, is only part of the time.

Ten years earlier, Peddle was evacuated from the country while others she’d gotten to know and love had to stay and endure the bloodshed. She tells a story of her friend, Frances, whose house was burned to the ground. She and her daughter were chased into the bush, where they hid for three days.

Frances recalled this memory to Peddle while they watched a bootleg copy of Blood Diamond—the Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio that takes place in Sierra Leone during the coup. They laughed, commiserated, and pointed out some of the discrepancies between the movie and real life.

For Peddle, witnessing the coup, and especially having to leave behind those who were not fortunate enough to be evacuated, cemented her dream of making a difference in the lives of people who have been affected by war and other extreme difficulties. At the time, she’d been writing her dissertation on the relationship between forgiveness and healing trauma in refugees of war. But she wanted more. She wanted to give them hope.

Hope in the face of this: Sierra Leone has been ranked one of the six poorest nations in the world for more than twenty years; its infant and child mortality rate is the highest in the world; and beyond the physical remnants of war, the psyche of the country’s children was ravaged by widespread rape, sexual abuse, and other violence.

Yet Peddle describes Sierra Leone as a beautiful country “with some of the most pristine beaches I have ever seen, with none of the Western glitter.” She writes of unspoiled forests and the welcoming of an incredibly friendly population. She describes rebuilt buildings with fresh coats of paint, vocational schools that are helping a large group of young adults gain a means to support themselves, and children who are “wide-eyed and full of hope.”