9rivermedia

Vickie Remoe is a television producer, host of the "Vickie Remoe Show" on AYV TV Channel 33, and a strategic communications and marketing consultant. She has just started a free masterclass for interested learners to develop digital skills. Her online news platform (SwitSalone.com) pays young people to submit local content stories.

Joan Adama Kainessie is a local designer and entrepreneur.  "As a girl, whenever my Dad would buy me (fabric), I'd take a pencil and draw what I wanted (the tailor) to sew. Later, when my step mum set up a shop, I was excited about having my clothes made right in front of me. So, I sat and watched her.  "When my mum closed the shop, I would (make clothes) and sell them to my friends at college. Eventually, my drawing book became my treasure. People were hiring me to do their designs and before I knew it, I started realizing a huge amount of money. Now, I encourage young people to grow so that they could hit the road to empowerment as I did years back."  Joan is teaching everything she has learned to six apprentices, who take home up to 300,000 Leones a month. They work on all kinds of designs in the workshop as they train to be dressmakers and tailors. Customers pay anything from 15,000 Leones for fabric and accessories to over 80,000 Leo...

Williette James is head of the Mass Communications department at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. Recently, she introduced the Women's Leadership Initiative. The group fights to nurture women and university students like me, Inyilla Conteh of Young Life in Freetown , in diverse ways. "The initiative is to help strengthen the minds of young women, who feel their views and opinions are never important in the gatherings they attend," she said. "We are going to ensure that we expose them to media and other opportunities by enabling them to master the art of public speaking. Most women are shy to speak in public; even the educated ones, and we aim to bridge that gap because bold women always stand a chance of blunting the sharp ends to possibilities,” she said.  Seven years ago, James was the coordinator of the U.N.-backed Gender Media Club in Sierra Leone, She told VOA that "it’s imperative that the press give more coverage to women's...

Sierra Leone’s government has signed a  deal for new buses, a news report said recently. According to the papers, the Xiamen Golden Dragon Bus Company in China is expected to supply 200 buses. The agreement was sealed at the China-Africa Summit, where President Maada Bio led a 15-man delegation. For now, just three minibusses serve hundreds of students at Fourah Bay College, which sits at the top of Mount Aureol in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. When it's home time, students who live off campus spend hours in long queues.  Typically, only the strongest make it into the jampacked trucks and minibusses. Minus the minibusses, a few taxis ply the route from downtown to the hilly campus. But even getting into those is a struggle. Past 5:00 pm, the taxis hardly come by. "The other day, I nearly broke my wrist trying to gain into a taxi, “ complained Haja Kadiatu Kamara, one of the students waiting in line. “It was so scary the way fellow students pushed to...