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Thursday, June 13, 2019

"Homeland actor's goal is to save children's lives..."

(Past pieces here from Sierra Leone:


A Hollywood star who helped break England’s penalty shoot-out curse hopes to repeat the feat this weekend - while bringing help to children struggling to grow up in a country ravaged by civil war, famine and the ebola virus.
David Harewood saved two penalties to help the England side win last year’s Soccer Aid game in a shoot-out at Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground a year ago.
And he has been encouraged in his hopes of further success by the senior England side breaking their spot-kick curse and winning shoot-outs against Colombia in last summer’s World Cup and to beat Switzerland in Saturday’s Nations League third-place play-off.
He is also keen to point out he conceded just one goal during regulation play last time around, whereas team-mate and former England and Arsenal stopper David Seaman let in two.
This Sunday’s match will be staged at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium for the first time, as an England side featuring former internationals such as John Terry, Joe Cole and Michael Owen - and managed by Sam Allardyce and Susanna Reid - faces a Rest Of The World XI including Terry’s former Blues team-mates Didier Drogba and Michael Essien, as well as Eric Cantona and Robbie Keane.
Celebrity players such as Ben Shephard, Sir Mo Farah, Niall Horan and James McAvoy are due to take the field too, with the Rest Of The World side bossed by Harry Redknapp and Reid’s fellow Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan.
And 53-year-old Harewood has provided the voiceover for a film to accompany the broadcast game that evening.
The appeal features Josephine, a mother who had a one-month old daughter also called Josephine who was born dangerously premature at seven months - and yet would not have survived, her family believe, without treatment at a Unicef-backed special baby care unit in the town of Makeni.
Among the locals he alsp met was an 18-year-old named Adamsay, eight months pregnant with her second child after her first died for lack of a vaccine aged six months - and yet forced to walk for eight hours a day to reach her nearest vaccination centre, a challenge made all the trickier in the current rainy season, leaving many roads and rivers impossible to pass.
Such clinics are also often left bereft of sufficient medication supplies to protect against illnesses such as TB and pneumonia, while also struggling to reach families neglected in distant and poorly-connected villages, Unicef say.
Harewood told Metro: ‘I picked my daughter up from school the other day and she said how they’d had vaccinations over their lunch-hour - whereas in Sierra Leone and too many other places it’s such a life-or-death struggle.
‘Adamsay lost one of her children because she just couldn’t get that basic medicine - I can’t imagine anything worse than losing a child to what should be easily preventable disease.’
The annual Soccer Aid event raises money in donations for Unicef’s development programmes across the world - and Homeland star Harewood recently visited some of the aid agency’s projects in struggling Sierra Leone.
He was enthused by schemes boosting access to vaccinations for mothers and children, along with more light-hearted games and activities including the simple provision of footballs and sporting strips.
Sierra Leone remains one of the world’s poorest countries despite the civil war finally ending in January 2002, after the arrival of 20,000 United Nations peace-keepers.
One in five children in Sierra Leone die before their fifth birthday, while one in eight women are killed by complications in pregnancy.
And the west African nation was one of the worst hit by the ebola virus outbreak of 2014, with almost 4,000 people killed in Sierra Leone and neighbouring Guinea and Liberia.
Birmingham-born and bred Harewood, whose credits include not only  drama Homeland but also movies such as Blood Diamond, flew into Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown before travelling across the country’s treacherous and barely-paved roads to remote districts such as Makeni and Tonkolili.
He said: ‘It’s the most naturally unspoilt terrain, extraordinarily beautiful, and yet with so little in the way of infrastructure or access.
‘Every village you go to, there are people wearing Premier League football shirts or having them draped across washing lines and just to see kids given and kicking a ball about reminds you that this really is the beautiful game - it brings such joy.
‘The country’s been a warzone, it’s been stricken by famine and by ebola, and yet these are children who just want to play.
‘It’s such a privilege to play on the same field as some of my footballing heroes - and I hope it turns out for us like last year, even if I was disappointed to concede one while David Seaman did let in two.
‘But I’ll also be thinking of the wonderful people I met in Sierra Leone and any help at all that anyone can provide them.’
Soccer Aid for Unicef - which has raised £30million since first being held 12 years ago - is due to be shown on ITV and STV this Sunday at 6.30pm.
For more information or to donate, visit www.socceraid.org.uk.

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