Irish Aid supports Amputee Football Club in Sierra Leone

In December 2015, the Salone Flying Stars, an Amputee Football Club, received funding from Irish Aid's micro project fund to set up a tailoring centre and provide crucial livelihood skills training to their members.

The Salone Flying Stars is a football club made up of women and men who lost their limbs during the civil war. As a result, they had limited opportunities in life to attend school or learn a trade. The group use football as a way to overcome the hurdles they face on a daily basis and work together as a support network. However, they recognised that they need more than football to provide for themselves and their families. Working together, they discussed the need to provide skills training for their members. Tailoring, a popular profession in Sierra Leone, was identified by the group as the most relevant, practical skill for their members to learn.

The tailoring centre, set up under the micro-grant, will target the most vulnerable members of the group, who are mostly women. The centre will offer training on a wide range of tailoring techniques, starting with the very basic skills. On receipt of the grant, the Salone Flying Stars Coordinator, Mohamed Jalloh said "this training centre will empower is for better future and will also serve as an eye opener for others that disability is not inability". The micro-grant will not only provide training on tailoring but will also focus on psychosocial counseling and adult literacy.

The Salone Flying Stars can be found playing on Lumley Beach, Freetown, every Sunday evening. Staff from the Irish Embassy recently saw them in action. Sinead Walsh, Ambassador of Ireland to Sierra Leone and Liberia, took the opportunity to commend the players for their skills and highlighted her delight at seeing several female players. She encouraged them to continue supporting each other and wished them well in setting up the training centre and rolling out the skills training.