Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone is a country located on the southwest coast of West Africa. It has two international borders; on the southeast is Liberia, and to the northeast is Guinea.
The land area is 71,740 km2 or 27,699 sq. miles with a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. The country is divided into five administrative regions which are subdivided into sixteen districts as of July 2017. The capital city is Freetown. The country has a very fertile arable land for agriculture and rich in various mineral deposits such as diamonds, gold, bauxite, and iron, etc.
Migrants as Messengers project is implemented in Sierra Leone based on the three strategies. The basic strategies are digital, on-air and on-ground with returnee migrants being at the center of awareness-raising through a peer-to-peer approach. In Sierra Leone, implementation builds on what has already been done by previous projects and other partner organizations, whilst adding creative thinking to improve and maximize previous work. In reaching out to our primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences, we work with a volunteer-led association to mobilize our volunteers and leverage our unique experiences to reach our common objectives. Our primary Government partners are the Returnee Migrant Association in Sierra Leone (Advocacy Network Against Irregular Migration). Ministry of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Youths; we work with other partners in the non-governmental sector, civil society, UN agencies, media, as well as other projects within the Mission. Our approach to partnerships is to build on what has already been done, avoid duplication, create synergies to maximize the reach and impacts of our activities, and to build a sustainable coalition that will articulate and promote safe migration and discourage irregular migration beyond the life of MaM.