RESPECT Mano River Union Committee

by Lakshmi Poorna

The Mano River Union has been formed to facilitate the friendly relationship existing between RESPECT Sierra Leone, RESPECT Liberia, and RESPECT Guinea. This union has come into being because of the common borders between their countries. Also, these three countries share a common ethnicity, culture, trade, and governmental structure. This committee will be called RESPECT Mano River Union Committee (RMRUC) with the motto "Togetherness and Common Understanding." Coordinators, teachers and facilitators, researchers and outreach officers of these organizations will play an active role in the committee. Refugee schools and students, who are members of RESPECT in one of the member countries, will be the ordinary members of the committee.

The committee plans on:

• Coordinating refugee policies and issues between the RESPECT member organizations in relation to refugee schools/students.
• Breaking the language barrier between Guinea with French as its official language, and Liberia and Sierra Leone with English as their official language. The committee will attempt to communicate bilingually when working on common activities.
• Setting up family tracing and reunification of children and youth with their parents in these war affected countries.
• Setting up Resource Centers with networked computers where refugee workers and students have easy access to update materials, participate in online discussions, forums and projects, and for easy and effective communication through email without any delay or loss of materials.