About the Child Reintegration Centre programs

Most recent initiatives: taking service capacity from 40 to 600 to 1088 children. 

• Microfinance Program: Every family wants to become self-sustaining and provide for their children’s needs.  In 2017, the CRC launched the Microfinance Program to teach some of the most vulnerable families how to budget, save, and create a simple business plan.  Microfinance graduates receive a small loan to launch their business. The graduates visit the CRC weekly to report their progress and make payments on their loans, and CRC staff visit the new businesses each month to track their progress.  In 2025 and 2026, with support from HCW and a congregation in New Jersey, CRC was able to extend microfinance training to 80 of the families on their caseload. Many of these trainees obtained eligibility to receive small business loans. There was interest in the program being expanded to youth services, but CRC elected to support more caregivers in the program instead.
• Village Partnership: In 2019, multi-party collaboration began to build on the support CRC and Mercy extended to families in rural Sierra Leone. The work on Village Partnership was derailed by the global shutdown during the Covid 19 pandemic. However, some infrastructure projects were completed in two villages, plus family strengthening workshops, health services, and educational support for destitute children in the villages that were enrolled in CRC’s programming. Case management and other services to those families and their children continue to be supported through the FEA dedicated donor program. The intention is that source of financial support will be replaced by increased income capacity, allowing CRC to enroll children from another of the 16 villages on their list of potential expansion sites. In 2025, the first Village Enterprise Project launched, and in 2026, it was turned over to the village to manage and operate as phase III of the collaboration with the Village of Fengehun. CRC, the Missionary Training and Resource Centre UMVIM Coordinator, and Mercy UMC Hospital staff collaborate to make joint decisions on the Village Partnership Committee. HCW supports this project by raising funds and overseeing donor accountability, and assisting with project evaluation, but does not make programmatic decisions. This enterprise is the last phase of the Village Partnership launched in Fengehun 5 years ago in collaboration with HCW and a dedicated VP donor who was underwriting the effort. The goal is that the enterprise will generate income to maintain the processing plant, increase family incomes in the village, and eliminate labor intensive and dangerous hand-processing techniques that threaten lives and livelihoods. Now in operation, the final phase is verifying that this model will generate income for sustaining the processing facility and the other community strengthening and infrastructure improvements. Two more VP projects will reach phase 3 in the next few years, and a fourth project is slated to begin planning in 2027. If successful, two villages will have community-based health services that they currently lack, augmented by Mercy UMC Hospital and managed in partnership with the government of Sierra Leone.
• Family Strengthening Program: The Family Strengthening Program provides opportunities for parents and children to participate in workshops, special events, and mentoring to strengthen the attachment of children to their parents or caregivers.   In 2025,  1088 children and 376 families were supported by the Child Reintegration Centre (CRC). CRC programming is family-centered and community based, with a professional case management staff, and offers clients educational scholarships, access to medical care, and family strengthening services through counseling, parenting education, economic supports, community education and training.   

Programs

The Child Reintegration Centre (CRC) utilizes a programmatic structure to fulfill the organization’s mission and vision. The key components of CRC include 

1. Transition Coaching and Mentoring to educate orphanage directors, and community leaders in order to transform the child welfare system in Sierra Leone, 
2. Case Management to oversee family strengthening plans, work with struggling families, monitor progress and refer to strengthening and empowerment services,
3. Family Empowerment services such as parenting and family management skills workshops, child-parent bonding education, basic services for economic stabilization, micro-economics and family finance education, micro-loans for family enterprises, access to health services, community connection and relationship building for long-term resilience,
4. Education support for scholarships and school supplies, as well as tutoring support for exams, and Promise Scholarship opportunities for post-secondary education,
5. Family Empowerment Advocacy (FEA) to educate donors and recruit more advocates to support the work. 

Transition Coaching and Mentoring (TCM)

The CRC lends its expertise by helping institutions/organizations achieve sustainable transformation to family care programs through child reintegration, family reunification, and training staff to work with family support systems rather than orphanage residential models. This is accomplished using the Transition Coaching and Mentoring framework. As Sierra Leone adopts a less tolerant policy toward long-term institutional care, the expertise of CRC’s TCM department will offer crucial services to ensure smooth transitions.

Family Empowerment Advocacy (FEA)

The primary function of Family Empowerment Advocacy is to maintain relationships between the CRC and funding partners. This is achieved through story-telling and connections. Advocates share words of encouragement with families, giving encouragement by keeping them in their prayers and learning about their challenges and successes. The efforts of FEA ensure that financial support for the important work of the CRC continues. The FEA employs data, pictures, storytelling and updates from families to help understand the impact of support. These are chosen from information collected by case managers during their visits and shared with Helping Children Worldwide (HCW) to distribute to advocates identified with a particular case manager’s caseload. child protection and family privacy is respected in all FEA information shared with donors. Advocates also support special appeals for an end of the year Christmas party, extraordinary health services such as surgeries requiring international travel, CRC’s work in the rural communities, Promise Scholarship, and Micro-loan programs.

We also raise funds locally within Sierra Leone, encouraging advocacy by inviting others across the country to support families with their finances.

Education

Educational support is given to all families in the CRC, with levels of support based on the Family Status Index (FSI). CRC’s education department functions as a liaison between the organization and the schools that families attend. This is accomplished through school visits, tutorials, exam preparation, and social activities, etc. Promise Scholarship opportunities are provided to well-deserving students whose family would not be able to afford post-secondary tuition. Consistent with the vision of the UMC Annual Conference for the future leaders of Sierra Leone, the CRC has provided scholarships to young people enrolled for services since its inception. 

The Teachers’ Learning Collaborative (TLC) is rooted in partnership with teachers from the United States (US), who over several years of service through short term mission trips with the United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (UMVIM), traveled to the CRC. While at the CRC, they taught children basic reading, writing and math skills for two weeks each summer. After the CRC’s transition to family-based care, the TLC also adapted to change by connecting US and Sierra Leonean teachers for the creation of a unique teacher training curriculum. Local teachers crafted training modules and provided response to the US-based curriculum in order to discover a proper fit for the Sierra Leonean context. Additionally, Sierra Leonean master teachers that worked hand-in-hand with the American teachers, went on to train 50 of their colleagues on the new curriculum in July 2024.

Case Management

The department is the root of CRC’s services to families and community. Assessing family status and devising care plans for their long term success, case managers regularly visit families in their homes (these visits include announced and unannounced visits) to gather first hand information about families and observe conditions, make follow-up phone calls and visit children at home and in school settings. The information is processed into data to assess family needs and progress over time. Case managers are responsible for presenting care needs to the approving body, and make referrals for additional services, adjust care plans and determine family readiness to be released from further support.