NGO seeks US $20,000 for refugees

A Swiss-based humanitarian agency, Action by Churches Together (ACT), has said it needs another US $20,000 to provide food, clothing, medicines, school fees and shelter for 300 Sierra Leonean war refugees in Mauritania. In an appeal on Monday, it said two-thirds of its US $60,000 project to care for the refugees was given by the UNHCR but was “too limited to address all the needs of the refugees”. ACT said 100 of the refugees - sick people, handicapped persons, children and women - were in “dire need of immediate” help. The refugees, who first started arriving in Mauritania when war broke out in Sierra Leone in 1991, have “no means of earning a living”, ACT said. The project, due to end on 31 December, is being implemented by ACT’s partner, the Lutheran World Federation/Department of World Service.