Optimistic Voices
Vital voices in the fields of global health, global child welfare reform and family separation, and those intent on conducting ethical missions in low resource communities and developing nations. Join our hosts as they engage in conversations with diverse guests from across the globe, sharing optimistic views, experiences, and suggestions for better and best practices as they discuss these difficult topics.
Optimistic Voices
Twice Orphaned: The MaMaw's House Story - Why Sponsorship Doesn't Save the Care Leaver.
When Jen Conrad first sponsored a child in Sierra Leone, she never imagined it would lead to adoption proceedings, heartbreaking visa denials, and eventually creating a groundbreaking program that's changing lives across the country. Her story reveals the hidden aftermath of institutional care that few people consider: what happens when orphaned children become adults?
After traveling to Sierra Leone multiple times and forming deep bonds with two siblings, Jen and her husband pursued adoption. Despite gaining full legal guardianship in Sierra Leone's courts, their hopes were crushed when U.S. immigration repeatedly denied visas for their children. Suddenly faced with parenting teenagers across an ocean, Jen discovered an even greater problem - young adults aging out of orphanages had nowhere to go and no skills for independent living.
"There were more resources available for someone coming out of prison than a child transitioning from institutional care," Jen explains. Without basic life skills, budgeting knowledge, or mental health support, these young adults faced nearly impossible odds. When rumors spread that the transition program would be ending and children might be sent back to families unprepared to receive them, Jen knew she had to act. She worked with a local Sierra Leonean NGO, Child and Family Permanency Services, to create a program to assist care leavers suddenly facing life outside the institution with no supports.
Named in honor of her mother who never gave up hope that her grandchildren would come home, Mamaw's House now provides comprehensive support to young adults leaving orphanage care. Managed as a program of an established organization that provides family strengthening, child reintegration and child protection services, Mamaw's House offers care leavers from Sierra Leone orphanages continuing education, connections to find basic housing and necessary services, mentorship from former care leavers, life skills training, and mental health services. Within its first year, it has already helped over 20 young adults.
As Sierra Leone considers legislation to close orphanages entirely, Mamaw's House stands ready to expand its crucial work. "I think their stories are going to be very powerful," Jen says of the resilient young people finding their independence through the program. "I'm really encouraged that they're going to break the cycle and be part of this change."
To learn ways you can help Mamaw's House and the Child and Family Permanency Services - go to https://cfpssl.org
Maternal Health impacts child and family wellbeing, and is an indicator of societal wellbeing as well. If you want to support this work, please give to the HCW Maternal Health Mission - Maternal Health Matters!
A new documentary on orphanage response - the right way!
Helpingchildrenworldwide.org
Welcome to Optimistic Voices, A Child's View, where we share incredible stories of resilience and hope through the eyes of children.
Speaker 2:I'm Natalie Turner, and this is my co-host, melody Curtis. Together, we'll talk about real kids who face tough challenges and the amazing people who helped them find a brighter future. Jen Conrad, a mother of five, three of whom were born under her heart and two of whom were born in heart through adoption. Jen holds a master's degree from the University of Southern California, a focus on military families. She has spent the last 13 years in the online marketing and community building space. Her love for Sierra Leone began with sponsorship and she made multiple trips to the country from 2015 to 2020. In 2019, jen and her husband expressed their interest in adopting with the Ministry of Social Welfare. After multiple attempts, the request for United States visas by USCIS were denied and her two children, now young adults, have to remain in Sierra Leone. Jen felt a passion to find a solution to equip those released from institutional care so that they can become self-sufficient.
Speaker 1:Let's welcome today's guest, Jen Conrad, founder of the MAMAS House Program of Child and Family Permanency Services in Sierra Leone. Program of Child and Family Permanency Services in Sierra Leone. Jen, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3:Hello, thank you guys for having me and for that great introduction. You covered a lot, natalie, so I'm not going to go ahead and repeat myself, but I'm tuning in from Central Illinois. Yes, I'm the mom of five, I am the wife to a recently retired Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps and, yeah, I'm here to really talk to you guys about MAMOS House and my passion for helping kids that have been in institutional care orphanages into independent living.
Speaker 2:We can't wait to hear all you have to share about MAMOS House. Before we dive in, though, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection to the children in this story?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I first got introduced to Sierra Leone when I was in the online business space. One of my friends at the time had shared that she had an orphanage that she ran and that she was looking for sponsors, and that sponsorship program was to help with the basic needs of the children, their education, and you also had the ability to Skype and to create relationships with these kids, and so I always wanted more kids. But if I told you the age of my kids, there's a big span. My husband was a Marine and he was gone a lot of times. So my oldest is 26, almost 26. And my youngest just turned 14. And so we have one in the middle and we wanted more kids, but that just didn't happen.
Speaker 3:And so when I found out that I could bring another child into our home through sponsorship, I was super excited, and so I signed up as a sponsor to a little boy and I would get to jump on and have a Skype session with him once a month on a Saturday, got to kind of get to know him. We struggled through the language barrier, but I got to watch him grow up, and after we started having those conversations, my family would join us and they got to know him as well, and so I was invited then to start traveling with this group, with a group of women who were just like me, who were in the online business space, who were sponsors, who were asked to come over and love on the kids that they had sponsored. And so at the time, adoption was never on my radar. It was just not something that we did in our little town. It just didn't happen. And so I was totally fine being a sponsor, a sponsor to one little boy.
Speaker 3:And then on my first trip, I met his sister. I kind of understood he had a sister, but I really didn't understand until I got there. And when I met his sister, she was the only little girl actually only child in the whole orphanage that had glasses, and both of my boys little boys wore glasses when they were little, and so I just had this like, oh my goodness, I looked at her eyes and her eyes looked like my boys and I'm like you are my daughter, you are supposed to be mine, and I was like where did that come from? But I kind of just tucked it away and my sponsorship of one turned to a sponsorship of two, and now our monthly Skypes was with both our son and our daughter and I just got to know both of them and so when I traveled they were both so excited to see me and build relationships with me and things like that, and so that went on for several years. We did the sponsorship program.
Speaker 1:That tells us a lot about your relationship and how it developed with the children. If we can begin with the child story and take us back to, how did they get to the orphanage in the first place?
Speaker 3:So a lot of what we found out about the children's history didn't really come up till the adoption process, and understandably, because there was confidentiality and things like that. But what we found out was that the mom was pretty young, dad was older and mom left the home and so the children were left with dad to care for them, plus a nephew. I believe that his brother passed away, leaving a nephew with him in his care, and so what we have found out is that a lot of times orphanages will go and they will promise education, they will promise a better life, they will promise food and things like that, and I really think that a struggling father there in Sierra Leone that was a very that just felt like a really good thing to do, Maybe not realizing they were ever going to be there forever or could be adopted or anything like that, but that's how they ended up into the orphanage. So they were probably one of the first set of siblings, I believe, that had been in the orphanage of siblings.
Speaker 2:I believe that had been in the orphanage. So how old were each of your children at the time and how did they cope with everything being in the orphanage and being separated from their father?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so from what I gather they were about six and three and so they really haven't shared a lot about that. I don't know that they really remember a whole lot. Before the orphanage we were all together during court which we'll get into later but they were very standoffish. Even mom rode in the car with us. They really weren't encouraged to have a relationship while they were in the orphanage, encouraged to have a relationship while they were in the orphanage, and I don't know that. Dad visited many times before actual court, maybe twice, and mom maybe a couple times too. So all they've ever really known was the orphanage, their brothers and sisters there, the aunties, and they're sponsors really.
Speaker 1:You refer to these children as yours and you've mentioned the court, and this is not a situation of a child sponsorship where the sponsor is saying that they're the child's parent, when what they really are is a donor and a supporter, and I know this because of our friendship, but our listeners do not, and they know, if they've listened to our podcast before, they know how we feel about child sponsorship here, and I know this is not that situation. So can you share with our listeners a little bit about the actual situation that you have and why you call these children your children?
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly. So at the beginning I kind of expressed that man, I wanted more kids and I felt like, hey, sponsorship's a way to add more children to our family. So, yes, I can see how there's confusion with that, because there are a lot of sponsors out there that the sponsor, the kiddos, call sponsors, mom and dad. But yes, these are truly our kids. We were asked to adopt if we had a heart for adoption. After our kids we found out later that our kids actually had a failed adoption attempt. Later that our kids actually had a failed adoption attempt, that there was another family that had sponsored them before us and had intentions of adopting them. That mom, that mom that wanted to adopt, ended up getting diagnosed with cancer and ended up passing away. And so she ended up passing away shortly after my second trip over there, and when they were kind of closing the adoption file, and so they the country director at the time came to me and just said, jen, you know what? We are trying to figure out a permanency plan for these kids about what comes next and do you have a heart for adoption? And, like I said at the beginning, adoption was something that just our community, our friends, our network just really didn't do, especially in international adoption. And so, you know, I had fallen in love with these kids, but my husband had only fallen in love with them just over Skype. And so I told the country director at the time that, you know, I feel really that it's a yes, but I don't ever want to say yes without my husband getting to meet these kids first, and I want him to feel what I feel. And so I told them that I couldn't give them an answer until my husband got back from his trip and he actually had a trip scheduled right around the time that we started this discussion and so I just told him that you know, I want you to go, I want you to go with an open mind, I want you to see if you see what I see, Just like I said that I saw my daughter and I looked at her and she had glasses and I just knew she was our daughter, and he completely went over and fell in love with them and he was like, absolutely yes, like we have to try.
Speaker 3:Another component of our story was that our son was getting ready to age out, and so in the country of Sierra Leone, you age out of orphan care at the age of 16, and you're not allowed to be adopted at that point. But because our son had a sibling in the orphanage, we were able to extend that to the age of 17. So, mind you, all of this was coming up super, super close to his 17th birthday. We had to get to court by his 17th birthday and he was about ready to. He would have turned 17 in April of 2020. And so we had to be in court by that date, otherwise everything would fall apart.
Speaker 3:And so we got a lot of resistance actually from our agency, because they're like you know, we just don't know if we can make this happen. You know, we have to do all this investigating and we've got to put everything together and we've got to make sure it can get to court. And so we were like we have to try, we have to try. We fundraised the money. We're like we have to try, we have to try. We fundraised the money. We had supporters locking arms with us and we were like we're just going to do it. And so we ended up in the adoption process in 2019. And we found out it was right after Christmas of 2019. So it would have been January 2020 that our file had made it to the high court of Sierra Leone and was ready to be, was ready to go to court. Hi, this is Jen Conrad from Mammoth's House, and we could use your help to continue the work that we're doing in Sierra Leone. We are on a mission to recruit 60 volunteers to join us as advocates. Your monthly donation will go to help us to equip care leavers with their basic necessities, their education and the ability to transition seamlessly into independence by going to wwwcfpsslorg.
Speaker 3:And so, like I had just said, we had to be through court by April of 2020. And so we got about a week's notice that one or both of us needed to appear in court and I decided to go. My husband stayed back, so I decided to go. I flew across on the 36 hours of travel that it takes there's no direct flight from the US to Sierra Leone and I did it the first time all by myself, and I was like what am I doing? I'm staying in a hotel by myself. Like you know, it was totally like a God thing. It was like I was being directed and protected the whole time. Because that's not me. I'm an introvert. I have anxiety, you know. I don't know it. Just you do what you're going to do for your children. Anxiety, you know, I don't know it. Just you do what you're going to do for your children.
Speaker 3:And so I went over to court in, like I said, january of 2019. The parents showed up and mom went with us, dad showed up with us at court. It was very awkward because I, at the time, I was kind of led to believe that they just, you know, as a I didn't understand what they were going through and I just thought it was like an abandonment thing. I didn't understand that maybe they had no choice or maybe they just no one ever explained to them really what could happen. And so there was just very, just, cordial. You know, we went to court and the judge came down really hard on the dad and the mom, but mostly on the dad like understanding what? Do you understand what this means? You're not going to see your children again, you're not going to be able to have them in your lives and blah, blah, blah, which we had always like, we wanted them to have a connection at that time, but they had to make sure that they understood what this meant. So, yeah, I was in the courtroom the only American, probably within the whole part of that country, if in the country, I don't know, but it was. I was very out of place there and we went through court and we had to hear like four or five cases before us, just like civil cases, so it was a very long day. But, yeah, the court, the judge, didn't blink twice. After that he granted me their guardianship and we believed that we were going to bring them home at that time. Well then, we all know what happened in March. The pandemic hit March of 2020. Our world shut down. So, luckily, we had been able we were getting ready to start the whole process of our visa application At that time, right after we got back from court, we found out that our actual agency that took us through the whole process lost their accreditation and so they no longer could apply for visas for us, and so we had to find an immigration attorney, and this was all happening during COVID.
Speaker 3:We had to find an immigration attorney that would, first of all, have a specialty of working in Sierra Leone, but also would take the liability of an adoption case that she did not see to court, and so we finally found a lawyer that was willing to take our case, who really believed that we could get them visas. And she told us it's going to take me some time. I've got to do my due diligence. And she told us it's going to take me some time. I've got to do my due diligence, I've got to. It's probably going to take eight months or longer. So she sat on our file eight months probably and we started then filing for I-600.
Speaker 3:As soon as we filed for I-600, requesting that they get visas to be brought to the United States for submitting all of our documentation, we were denied.
Speaker 3:And the denial came back that because the relinquishment of rights of the children were done for an adoption, that could be seen as a form of trafficking, seen as a form of trafficking. So had the children, had the parents' rights been relinquished whenever they were brought into the orphanage, this might've been a totally different case, but literally our children were brought into this orphanage. The parents could have literally picked them up at any time and brought them back home with them. There was no relinquishment of rights, and so we appealed that and we shared that. This just isn't common practice within the orphanage, within the culture even that we found, and you know, and we were denied again, and so every time you have to resubmit, you're paying a lawyer, you're paying the fees. And then we had one more chance and submitted even more things, and submitted even more things and we were told it's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen, and so basically, we didn't know what to do next. We didn't know. Now we were going to be parenting two teenagers across the ocean.
Speaker 2:So I imagine this was a very stressful and uncertain time for you and your family, and I want to hear about what that would be like to parent from across the ocean, and can you tell us a little bit more about how you were able to do that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So as soon as we entered into the adoption process, we were granted the ability to Skype with them every Saturday morning, have conversations up until COVID. Once COVID hit, they stopped Skype. We were told that it was because they didn't have the staff to bring in. I mean, all the funny things happened during COVID right Like the playground across the street was closed down here. Crazy things happened to COVID. We didn't know how to cope.
Speaker 3:But Skype stopped for a while, and so our attorney, though, got involved and said you know what? They're trying to bring these children home. They need to have communication. They cannot just be not talking to these kids for months at a time. They're trying to build a relationship to integrate them into their home. And so we were finally granted permission, even though we were the only adoptive parents in that situation. But we had to be quiet about it, because if any donors caught wind that we were talking to our children, privileges would be taken away, and so, at one point or another, something got out. Our privileges were taken away again until the process for everyone was opened back up, and so I did have a problem with that, because they were our children. It's not very easy to parent if you can't have communication with your children.
Speaker 3:But we just kind of played by the rules because we were still trying to fight to get them home and then, once everything closed down, once we got the final this is not happening. Things really weren't different. Nobody came to us and said you know, OK, this is what happening. Things really weren't different. Nobody came to us and said, you know, okay, this is what we need to do, or we're here to help you with this. You know, we were only allowed to communicate with them that Saturday morning at 7am, which I did for years, which almost became like a chore for us, to be honest, you know, it was just something we did and it became very robotic and I think it was stressful for all of us, and so I just really desired to be able to have like an honest conversation with them, or them to be able to reach out to us, reach out like if they wanted to talk, you know. But that just wasn't. We didn't have that ability. So it was very very difficult, jen.
Speaker 1:So I'm hearing you say that in Sierra Leone, the government had identified these children as being exclusively your children, but in the United States they were identified as not your children and in the meantime they were living in an orphanage and they were being treated as if your relationship with them was still that as a donor?
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly, and we found out later that they still had sponsors and things like that coming in during the whole process. So their life didn't change my relation. I didn't get reports on school. I only got one phone call when there was an incident with our son, just telling us what was happening, not even bringing us in and things like that. So we were kept really at an arm's distance, not encouraged to be any more involved than we were. So we really knew that we needed to do something.
Speaker 3:Our son was in a program that was supposed to be helping them transition from orphan care into independent living. Our daughter had not been transitioned. Our son actually was only placed there because of a behavioral issue, not even because that was the next step for him, and so they weren't even living together. One was at this one place, one was at the other. They weren't even well, they were at the same school for a while, yes, until our son started university, but they weren't even together. So that was a huge concern for me because they had literally been together. I mean, that's all they had was each other. And so, you know, this went on for a little while during COVID.
Speaker 3:I lost my mom shortly after COVID hit and my mom actually in 2022. So we had our final like my mom still right before she died like was like you guys are going to bring these kids home, like we were still doing this up into 2022. And I felt really alone because there was nobody else in my shoes. There was not an another adoptive mom who was sitting there with kids in an orphanage and trying to navigate this. I couldn't hop on a plane to go and do this because, first of all, I didn't know where to start. Number two, I'm not even sure that I would have been given access to them.
Speaker 3:I just really felt like my hands were tied and so, luckily, I was introduced to you all at HCW. You all were like the best of friends for me. You sat with me, you listened to me and my friend Katie, who we will talk about here in just a little while that she had one I had met in Sierra Leone, was a country director. You guys all sat with me when no one else really would, because everyone had kind of carried on. They either adopted or they had lost interest or whatever. You guys all sat with me when no one else really would, because everyone had kind of carried on. They either adopted or they had lost interest or whatever, and so I just was like, okay, if it's this hard for me to figure this out as an adoptive mom, what is going to happen to these other kids who don't have somebody to advocate for themselves, that are going to age out? Who's going to help them?
Speaker 2:But this is where the story starts to turn around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. So I mentioned, you know, partnering then with HCW and I'm sitting on calls for me with hours and hours and communication of emails and things like that and my friend Katie just a fun coincidence I just love to share is that we were both in Sierra Leone and we were both from small town, illinois not the same town, but not too far from each other. That was really cool. And so my friend Katie married an Irishman and they had a heart for Sierra Leone and you can go listen we should drop their podcast in the show notes, but they're doing amazing work Even before I was even introduced to them. But they really had a heart for keeping families together and for giving families the tools they needed so that their children wouldn't end up in orphanages like my children were. If someone would have been able to step in and say no, like let's help you, let's figure this out, let's you know, this is what it is to be a dad and this is how we can get you some income and help with those things, I think our kids would have been in a totally different situation. And so Katie introduced me to her husband, johnny. He started sharing with me about their program, their program, cfps, child and Family Permanency Services I had just told him my vision. I said look, johnny, you know I am a mom of these kids and I don't have any more rights than anybody else.
Speaker 3:We started hearing rumors that the program that my son was in that was supposed to be transitioning these kids was going to be coming to an end, and so that meant there was probably going to be at the time, maybe 18 kids in that same situation, and we were like what is going to happen to them? And so we started hearing that the plan for the orphanage was to reunite them with their families, and I told you before that my children had limited contact with their parents. My social work background tells me that's not a good idea. You cannot just take a child that's been in orphan care and throw them back into a village. And so I've learned through all this whole process.
Speaker 3:I've read books, I've watched podcasts, I've watched interviews of children who have been in orphanages, who then were encouraged to go back to their villages, and how they felt like aliens, how the families thought that they had to feed them differently, how they felt like aliens, how the families thought that they had to feed them differently, how they felt like they had to get them different clothing, how they felt like they needed to sleep in a different place. You know, when they came into the orphanage, they lost their tribal beliefs. Many of them lose their religions At the orphanage. They were to become Christian and we found out that what over 90% of the population in Sierra Leone is actually Muslim, so these kids are ripped away from the religion, not to mention there's tribal languages and beliefs and all of those things. And so once we started hearing that, oh my gosh, like I can't imagine my kids having to go back into a village, like this cannot happen. And if this can't happen for my kids and I'm here to help support them and navigate them through this process what's going to happen to these kids that just have sponsors? And, like we had talked about earlier, you know a lot of the sponsors that became involved with these kids, like they did become part of their lives. They became a part of their. They were their children, right, and so they were willing to do whatever was necessary in order to help support, realizing that their hands have been tied all along as well, but they wanted to help. They didn't want to see a reintegration, going back to a family who wasn't prepared to take them and weren't prepared to take them 15 years ago, you know. And so I just started like like kind of visioning, like what does this look like? There were more resources available for someone that's coming out of a prison in Sierra Leone than a child who has to transition from institutional care to independent living.
Speaker 3:The things that I thought that my son was getting was, you know, he was getting educated, which I'm so blessed by that. All these kids are super smart and super educated, so that was amazing that they did so, blessed by that. All these kids are super smart and super educated, so that was amazing that they did follow through with that. But life skills how to navigate the streets of Sierra Leone, how to I mean, they've had to learn, like how to carry their own money and budgeting, and now they've got cell phones and, you know, sex education and all of these little things that we kind of would take for granted that they're getting they didn't have.
Speaker 3:And so my mom wanted nothing more than to get these kids home. She knew she would never travel to Sierra Leone, but she got to know them through my stories and my travels and talking to them, sometimes on Skype and things like that. And, like I said, we lost her in 2022 and she still was holding onto the promise that these kids are coming home, like, don't give up, don't give up. I was like, okay, we need to create a program and the program is going to be called Mamaw's House. So my mom was Mamaw to my kids. I wanted to honor her in the process.
Speaker 3:So Mamaw's House to my family has always been a place of comfort, a place to kind of get away, a kind of place to rest and, you know, just to be poured into you like a grandma does, right, a grandma pours into you. And so my mama's house was a place that I went when my husband was off in war and I would take my boy well, one boy at the time and it would be our place to get away. So we didn't have to deal with the day-to-day to rest, to go to the beach, go to the pool, do all the things. And so when I started thinking about what I wanted this program to look like, I wanted it to be a place where these young adults could come and find comfort, who could come and find themselves, who they really were, and they had been told all the time what to do and how to do it, and they were very limited on the worldly outreach, and so we wanted to create a place where they had mentorship, where they had guidance, where they could make mistakes as young adults and have someone to explain to them like no, this is not the direction you need to go.
Speaker 3:Or we also realized that many of these kids never had any therapy and we had kids that came from mudslides. We had kids that came from losing parents, drowning. You know, luckily my children didn't go through something like that, but they have lived their whole life away from a parent, wondering why my parents gave me up, and then they went through two failed adoptions and so you know they needed to have some mental health care there. So, part of this process, we wanted to equip them, like I said, with a mentor, somebody that had come out of institutional care, because nobody knows that better than someone that's been through it. So we wanted to equip them with their continuing education because, like I said, so my son was. He was in university when he got out of the institution. He was able to continue in his university with our help, but we wanted to give them budgeting and life skills.
Speaker 3:The girls didn't know how to use some feminine products and feminine hygiene and all the things, and so we wanted to make sure that they were equipped with the basic tools of how to live independently, because we knew if they were just let off like the cycle will not break. Pregnancies are going to happen. You know they're going to feel like they can't take care of them and they were raised in an orphanage. So I'm just going to take my child to an orphanage and so we don't break the cycle that way, and so we didn't want this program to become a place that they're constantly going to be relied upon. We're giving them the foundation and the skills with the plan that we can transition them off. Some kids my daughter was the very first one that entered into Mama's house last summer June, may, june. You know she's on the younger side, so she won't be yet ready to transition off in a year. Younger side, so she won't be yet ready to transition off in a year. But we do have some older young adults who very much will be able to transition in a year or become mentors for others that come into the program. There is legislation and talk going on about closing orphanages in the country of Sierra Leone. So if that happens, we're going to need much more support within the program because there's going to be many more young adults. I can see the minors actually going more towards the CFPS side, you know, helping the families to really become, you know, stable so that they can start rebuilding their families, because they haven't been encouraged to have those relationships.
Speaker 3:I am so unbelievably surprised at how well my children have integrated. I thought that my son wants to ask me lots of questions and so I thought he would be texting me all the time. But then I had to give him the confidence of like it's okay, you're an adult, you get to make these decisions. And so the parenting came from afar, through technology. We actually really haven't had a whole lot of like phone conversations, which is hilarious because that's how we built. Our relationship was with Skype. But now that they could type and they can voice message, like that's what they do, and I had to encourage my son like he'll message me and he'll say mom and that's it. And I'm like okay, we live on how many hours apart? If you want to have a conversation, just tell me what you need. We can continue to have this conversation. So we've had to learn things like that. But they are finding their own way, their own paths. And one thing that really brought me so much joy so now we've helped over 20 young adults and we've been in this inception.
Speaker 3:It was January of 2024 is when our program first started even getting talked about. Like I said, we had brought in our first group of kids. It was like May, june, july of last year, first group of kids. It was like May, june, july of last year, and it was really fast because the orphanage did let children go back to families and those kids were like they don't have a bed for me, they don't have a room for me, they're not prepared for me. And then, realizing that they were young adults, they could make their own decisions, they came asking like how can you help me? And so, luckily, because we partnered with CFPS, they already had established caseworkers, they already had social workers, they already had mental health workers and then they had worked very closely then with HCW to really establish that foundation. So we were able to seamlessly I mean we were in like a crisis mode for a while Like what are we going to do?
Speaker 3:We got to find homes and you would think you can't understand as an American that you can't just go and rent a house or an apartment, like it's really, really hard to find a place that's safe and suitable but a place that they also could manage if they didn't have multiple advocates giving money for, but also they require like two years in advance of rent and so there's all of these hurdles that we had to do just to even find places.
Speaker 3:So our girls have been actually housed at a place that CFPS has had and it's been so fun to watch them just like come together and grow together independently. Then our boys have been closer to university campus and I think it comes down to empowerment empowering the care leavers with the tools so that they can carry those over, but also, again, like I said, the work that CFPS is doing with empowering the family to stay together, and that starts with providing education, providing tools, providing resources. They just don't know what they don't know, and so we get to be that middle person to help them kind of navigate Sounds like you've already done a lot for these young people who were released from orphanages without anywhere to go.
Speaker 1:Do you have any plans in the future to open Mamaw's house to new care leavers who have no place to go, you know, as legislation changes? Before Natalie wraps us up with her note of optimism for the episode, jen, what makes you optimistic?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I am very optimistic about the future for those that are in our program. My kids have really surprised me with their resilience and I've seen this with the other young adults who have come in as well. It's gone really, really well. Of course, we've had a couple. You're gonna have issues with young adults and things like that, but I feel like we're gonna be able to really break that cycle and I think that was my intention. Going through.
Speaker 3:This is that, like I said, our kids they're very Americanized for because they lived in an institution that was led by Americans, they were used to having Americans come and visit and things like that, and so I'm really, really optimistic that they're gonna be able to be a part of this change. That happens especially when legislation stops allowing the intakes of more so-called orphans. Many of them were not even orphans. So I think that their stories are gonna be very powerful and I'm really hoping that soon we'll have some young care leavers that can come on and share their stories with you all, because I think you will be totally blown away with just like their perspective. But I'm really, really encouraged that they're going to be able to break the cycle and be a part of this change in the next I'm hoping five, less than five years. Yeah, I mean orphanages need to stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, first off, jen, I love that your story is your firsthand experience with this, that this has affected your children and you, so I think my note of optimism from your story is that people see a need. You saw a need and you took action, and I love that we are, as a society and globally, seeing a need and doing something about it and really help these children over in Sierra Leone. Thank you, thank you, jen, for sharing this incredible story and thank you, listeners, for joining us today on Optimistic Voices A Child's View.
Speaker 1:And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share it with your friends and leave a rating and review. Check our show notes so that you can learn a little bit more about Mamaw's house and the work they're doing and maybe get engaged with this mission and this work for the youth of Sierra Leone.
Speaker 2:Until next time, remember there's always hope in every voice matters. Bye for now.
