Regional Director visits Sierra Leone Country Office

^{_{Regional Director, Philip Adapoe in a meeting with staff at the Coordination Office in Freetown. February 2022. Photo Credit: Abdul Sillah, Save the Children.}}

In February, the West and Central Africa Regional Director, Philip Adapoe, visited the Sierra Leone Country Office to officially introduce the new country director Patrick Analo, share the movement’s vision to deliver results for children with impact and see some of the country office programmes.

In his meeting with staff, he reiterated that Sierra Leone was an important country office for the organization and that Save the Children planned “to stay.” He called on staff to enjoy doing what they do as this would add value and quality to their work.

“We need to focus on what is important and we need also to be more accountable. So, we continue to talk about delivery on time, on budget, on compliance and of course safeguarding the people (we work with) will come very strong on you for safe programming, he said.

“So now that we are talking about increasing our impact, most of us think that increasing our impact means increasing our funding. It's not like that. We will have to do more with less.”

He stated that talent management was a priority this strategic period (2022-2024) and that Save the Children will be focusing on developing people to take on more responsibility and assume senior leadership roles. He noted that the organisation’s most valuable asset is its human resource and can only deliver quality for children if its human resource has quality.

Genda Bizness phaseout and field visit
Philip had the opportunity to attend the Genda Bizness project phaseout ceremony; a three-year project using a holistic approach to end teenage pregnancy and support vulnerable youth in Western Area. He was pleased with what he saw at the ceremony and proud of the gains made for young people.

He also visited the Waterloo Field Office to touch base with some of the projects being implemented in that part of the country.

Overall, Phillipe’s visit not only gave him a chance to see the good work the country office was doing, it gave staff a platform to share their views and reaffirm their commitment to doing what they do best through our programmes to ensure children reach their full potential in life.