From Curiosity to Commitment: What Joanne Dewar Learned Running the Sierra Leone Marathon with Street Child

She’s spent years at the heart of the fintech world, building, scaling and championing inclusion. But it was a sweltering marathon in Sierra Leone that shifted something for Joanne Dewar. What began as a personal challenge became an eye-opening encounter with resilience, ambition and the power of grassroots change.

Here, she shares that journey with The Fintech Times.

When I first signed up for the Sierra Leone Marathon, I’ll admit, I thought this would be about the challenge. I prepared as best I could; building up distance, stamina, running with a load and mental strength. I read about previous years: 42-degree heat, 80 per cent humidity, uneven terrain. Could I really do this?

But now, having returned, I can honestly say: the ‘race’ was just a victory lap. What filled my head and heart were the moments, the people and the stories that I experienced in the days before. I went to Sierra Leone curious. I returned completely committed to doing more.

I’d heard of the charity Street Child many times over the years. Their presence across the fintech landscape is pervasive — often thanks to the inimitable Julia Streets, managing director of Streets Consulting and a longstanding Street Child trustee. Through events like the London Fintech Awards, Fintech Fringe and the Fintech Marketing Awards, Julia’s support has helped introduce the charity to thousands in our sector.

It had first piqued my interest a couple of years ago as it had stirred something deeper inside me. When I was just 16, I spent six weeks building a school in northern Togo, as part of a charitable programme. That experience – and the desire to ‘do more’ in a meaningful way – had never left me. So I leaned in. I got to know the Street Child team. I learned about their model of supporting local champions. The more I discovered, the more impressed I became.

Each year, Street Child runs a very special trip: the Sierra Leone Marathon. It returns to Makeni, in central Sierra Leone, where the charity was founded 16 years ago. Devastated by civil war and more recently Ebola, Sierra Leone is consistently ranked among the poorest nations on earth — currently 181st on the UN Human Development Index and in the bottom 15 globally for income per capita. That’s why Tom Dannatt founded Street Child there: because if he could make a difference here, he could make a difference anywhere.

The trip offers a rare, powerful opportunity to visit the projects, meet the local team, hear directly from the founding team, the programme directors and the social workers, and understand the strategy, rationale, and challenges that underpin everything they do. Few charities open their doors in this way and fewer still combine this depth of insight with the invitation to fundraise and run side by side with the people you’re there to support.

Over four packed days, we visited a selection of Street Child’s schools and projects. We met families who had built livelihoods from nothing and proudly shared how their children’s education was offering a brighter future, whilst they have the dignity of earning from their street stalls. We met a mother who had used her initial Street Child grant to start selling mangoes that she bought from the village eight years ago and proudly shared with us that her eldest daughter had completed school and was now training to be a midwife.

In the classroom, children were eager to share with us their ability to count and recognise letters. Street Child has adopted a methodology (Teaching at the Right Level) to ensure that every child benefits from time in the classroom, and builds skills and confidence, regardless of their age and start point. We learned how one of the factors that helps identify whether a rural school is needed is based on the principle that no primary-aged child should have to walk more than 6km to school, an hour each way.

The prior nearest school for one village we visited additionally crossed a railway line and a road used by the mining juggernauts – not a walk that any parent would be comfortable with for their eight year old unaccompanied, so until Street Child built the new school, the villagers had made to under a mango tree.

A staggering 650 rural schools have been constructed funded by Street Child across Sierra Leone and teachers trained. 300,000 children have been reached in Sierra Leone alone. That’s what Street Child has already achieved. Quietly. Relentlessly. Effectively.

The fintech parallels are impossible to miss. Street Child operates like any boot-strapped founder led high growth scale up – agile to opportunity, constantly testing the market with new ideas, hungry for data that demonstrates impact, driven by the most compelling purpose.

While it can be easy to assume Street Child is all about the fabric of schools and teaching, its real super power has been in designing thoughtful scalable award-winning support mechanisms that create sustainable models of addressing the root causes and keeping children in education, maximising the long-term impact of every financial contribution.

Central to this has been the Family Business for Education (FBE) scheme. Launched in 2010, FBE provides ultra-poor caregivers – over 90 per cent of them women – with small grants, business training, and ongoing mentoring to help them start or grow income-generating activities. The aim is not just to lift families out of immediate hardship, but to give them the means to consistently afford school fees, uniforms, materials, and meals – the often-overlooked barriers that prevent children from completing their education.

To date, more than 40,000 families have benefited from this approach, with over 70 per cent of children still in school three years after receiving support which is an extraordinary retention rate in fragile settings. Recognised with a WISE Award in 2019, FBE has become a proven, scalable model for pairing financial inclusion with education outcomes. And for those ready to grow beyond the grant, the follow-on Loans for Learning programme offers further capital, always with the same non-negotiable focus: helping children stay in school.

Race day came. We gathered before sunrise in Makeni. The atmosphere was buzzing — locals cheering, runners stretching, adrenaline building. I ran my distance (a half marathon), soaking in the scenery, processing everything I’d seen. But my mind wasn’t on the finish line. It was on the families, the students, the teachers — and how much more there is still to do.

This wasn’t a bucket-list moment. It was a turning point. And I wasn’t alone. Our group, spanning geographies and generations, all shared a quiet understanding by the end of the week. We had seen the difference. We had met the people behind the metrics. And we had all raised funds that will enable Street Child to keep going further, faster.

Let’s face it: the world can feel bleak right now. Whether it’s climate chaos, economic instability, or cuts to overseas development aid, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. But amid all of that, Street Child shows that there is something meaningful we can do. They are not just delivering education; they are delivering hope, dignity, and agency.

Fintech is a community of innovators, many already seeking to find ways to leverage technology to address some of the world’s challenges and has already been particularly strong on addressing financial inclusion. Street Child is a charity helping children access and stay in education in over 20 over the world’s poorest country, in the process, needing to navigate many of the mechanisms we create – including international transfers, emergency disbursement, mobile money, micro finance, KYC. There are therefore many ways in which we can lean in.

So if you’re reading this and wondering what difference you could make, or where to start — consider Street Child. Sponsor a runner. Join the next trip. Bring them into your workplace as a charity partner. Or lean in to learn more.

Few organisations deliver as much, with as little, as effectively as Street Child. I went in curious. I’ve come back determined. And I can promise you: if you lean in, you won’t regret it.

Learn more or get involved:

• Visit www.street-child.org

• Explore the Sierra Leone Marathon

• Support a fundraiser or corporate partnership

• Drop me a note!