Our coordionator spotlight is on Agnes Conteh, the country coordinator in Sierra Leone. In the picture above, Agnes is shown recently receiving a Tonkolili and Bombali Women in Leadership Award. She has also received an award for being one of the most influential women in her community:
Agnes Conteh is presently the country coordinator for Bountiful in Sierra Leone. She grew up on a farm in Kenema. When she was a teenager, she saw a pamphlet about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but had to wait until she was 16 to meet missionaries that came to Sierra Leone. After joining the Church, she served as a district missionary and then served a mission in Ghana. She received a certificate in finance and decided to start her own non-profit. Agnes was asked to help as a Bountiful coordinator in 2015 and has been busy ever since. She has a son and daughter who both served Church missions in Nigeria. We are grateful for Agnes and her efforts to fight malnutrition in her community.
Agnes has been a coordinator in Sierra Leone since 2015 and shares the joy she has found working with the children in this short video:
The group picture below is of the program recipients in Makeni, Sierra Leone. The malnourished children and their parents shown here have just received a distribution of nutritional food supplements. Their hearts are full of thanks and gratitude for such a life-changing program which provides the children supplements which promote their growth and development.
The Makeni community shares their thanks for Bountiful’s donors, volunteers, and programs:
Background about malnutrition in Sierra Leone
Agnes shared a report published in 2014 by the “Borgen Project” on the internet about the status of malnutrition in Sierra Leone:
“Sierra Leone has both one of the highest malnutrition rates and one of the highest child mortality rates. More than a third of children are chronically malnourished; in 2010, 22 percent were underweight, 44 percent were stunted, or had a low height for their age and eight percent were wasted, or had a low weight for their height.
“The child mortality rate is 267 deaths per 1,000 children. Almost half of these premature deaths are caused by malnutrition.
“The major influence in the high malnutrition rate is the lack of breastfeeding. Only eight percent of infants are breastfed. The rest are given insufficient substitutes, sometimes water.”
On this note, the monthly support from donors would continue to promote the Foundation’s intervention in providing health lessons (which include breast feeding) and nutritional food supplements to these severely affected children.
Boutiful Children’s 8 Health Lessons
Link to Read or Download 96-Page Manual
- Introductory Lesson: Why Nutrition, Why Bountiful
- Lesson 1: Cognitive Stimulation
- Lesson 2: Proper Disposal of Human Waste
- Lesson 3: Proper Hand Washing
- Lesson 4: Clean Drinking Water
- Lesson 5: Safe Food Preparation
- Lesson 6: Increase Dietary Nutrient Intake
- Lesson 7: Breastfeeding
We are so grateful for you, Agnes! Thank you for all of your hard work in helping children in Sierra Leone.