With your help, we have been paying for medicines, hospital tests and treatment, school fees, rent on zinc houses, food, clothes and the birth of babies. We have also helped several babies and toddlers recover from malnutrition and saved the lives of three adults by paying for their surgery and subsequent food and medicine.

Money is transferred using the World Remit app. Once in Sierra Leone, our trusted contact, Grace/Georgia Adams collects the money and distributes it accordingly. She then provides us with photographs and videos once the people have received the money. We have also set up an account in a Sierra Leonean bank, where we keep emergency funds.

I have now visited Sierra Leone six times. My wife, Alexandra Gennaris has been three times. During our 2024 visit; on the night before we left to return to London, we witnessed zinc houses, belonging to our families, burn down with the fire brigade powerless to save them. This left the families homeless and without clothes and money. In order to best see how to support people there, we need to be in the thick of it and we really were that night.

In 2020, I started sending food, clothes (including Islamic dresses and head scarves), books, medicine and other essential items. These have been primarily for the Zinc House Kids (photo) and their families, as well as the mission’s clinics, schools and orphanages. More recently, we sent, 10 desktop computers with monitors, 4 large folding tables with 12 seats each, 11 large school tables, playground and nursery equipment and much more.

During our 2023 visit to see the zinc house kids we met a woman who after a severe stroke in 2017 had lost the use of her legs. She had spent 6 years sleeping on the floor and unable to leave her windowless zinc house. On our return we managed to send her a new wheelchair, bed and commode. The tailor at the zinc houses also asked if we could send him a few cotton reels for his sewing machine. We managed to find around 50 industrial size cotton reels and thousands of buttons. This donation allowed him to continue supporting his family and friends.

A donation of materials from two shoe mender friends of mine in London have helped a shoe mender in Freetown support his family.

Financial support has paid for school and university fees, exams, school uniforms and equipment, medicine, hospital tests, yearly rent, food, mobile phones, setting up businesses, Christmas and birthday presents, weddings and sadly funerals and a gravestone.

We have funded several feast day barbecues, where we have brought together communities from two Orthodox churches in Freetown and

one in Waterloo. The food and soft drinks were also made available to members of staff at the mission who are Muslim.

Our last trip was in February 2026, during which we had a church barbecue for around 250 people, an outdoor movie night for our zinc house kids, a beach party for 50 zinc house kids with some of their mothers, fathers and grandmothers. There was also a visit to the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary for some of our teenagers, followed by lunch high in the rainforest.

The most difficult aspect of helping the mission and Zinc House Kids is locating the funds. Here are examples of some of our costs which are constant.

£50 - £60 will treat malaria and typhoid as well as other diseases.

£10 is the equivalent of 1 week's wages and will pay for 20 "square meals".

£10 will buy a party dress and shoes.

£40 - £80 will pay for one term at school.

£50 will pay the freight cost to Sierra Leone of a large suitcase.

£60 - £80 will pay one year's rent on a zinc house.

We are also in desperate need of all children’s ‘off-the-shelf’ medicines and vitamins. For adults we need bath gels and shampoo, sanitary towels, ibuprofen tablets and gels, paracetamol. To send all the items, we need old suitcases and large holdalls. Baby items such as creams, bath gel and shampoo are also needed.

Prescription glasses and magnifiers are also useful. As well as mobility aids.

Food items can also be sent. These are rice, pasta, hot sauces, condiments, canned vegetables and any long-life items that do not need refrigeration. These need to be organised as a mass collection and will be sent in large plastic barrels.

Please help us to give hope to the Zinc House Kids of Sierra Leone.

Why not set up a direct debit on GoFundMe and help us all the year round? PLEASE IGNORE THE "SUGGESTED" £100 donation and give what you can.

Irrespective of their religious beliefs, we help children and families, most of which, we have met personally.

You can catch updates of our work in Sierra Leone by watching our monthly cable TV programme, Table for Two on Hellenic TV. Also available on YouTube by searching for "hellenic tv table for two".