Melksham soldier's mission to help African orphanage (From Wiltshire Times)

Melksham soldier's mission to help African orphanage

10:40am Tuesday 22nd December 2009

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A Melksham soldier has sent hundreds of donated items to an orphanage in Sierra Leone this Christmas.

Regimental Sergeant Major Rob Seabridge, now based at Colchester Garrison, Essex, was inspired to help the orphanage in Freetown, during his posting to the war-torn country, between 2006 to 2008, where he helped save the life of a young orphan called Sia.

He and his wife Helen have collected items for the orphanage, including bunk beds, desks, chairs, clothes and toys, toiletries, a box of spectacles and even a microscope and wheelchair, some of which were used by UK troops in Iraq this time last year.

RSM Seabridge was in Sierra Leone working as part of the International Military Advisory and Training Team, when he helped Sia find a new home with the orphanage, run by the charity International DOVE (Development Orphanages Vocational Education).

He said: “There was a small child who used to hang around the camp and I asked who she was and was told her name was Sia and she was the daughter of Lieutenant Mbowa in the Sierra Leone Army.

“When I kept asking who she was a few weeks later, someone said she was the daughter of the late Lieutenant Mbowa “She was left with some distant family who couldn’t look after her. She was very poorly clothed, receiving no education and her meals were intermittent.

“Basically the orphanage saved Sia’s life at my request, and it was then I decided I should do more. Now she’s got a loving home where she is clothed, fed and schooled.”

The collected items left Colchester on December 16.

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