About Me

I'm an ex-street guy who was on the streets of Freetown and spent five years in the cold weather trying to discover my true self and also to find my future. Cleffy is my pen name and Ibrahim Sorie Bangura is my biological name.  I was born in Sierra Leonean, 1992, in the Northern province of  Port Loko District, Kaffu Bullom Chiefdom, Lungi town. I migrated to the capital Freetown in 2011 to escape rural poverty. In 2014 I joined a UK charity organization called WAYout Arts for Youth which offers free media skills training to disadvantaged youth. I am now a published poet who writes on the themes of memory, childhood and village culture in three local languages in addition to English to address social issues. In 2017 my poem 'Home' was short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers Adda Poetry commission. In the past years my poems have been published in Written Off: poems and stories from the streets of Sierra Leone (2018) and in online literary magazines; Praxis, Write the City, Writers Space Africa and Better than Starbucks. I have recently completed a poetry project supported by the Prince Claus Fund. 

I have also been working since 2018 as a local peace-builder and community human rights activist with a key focus on fighting against all forms of injustice against young people especially children, women and girls. I am the founder and  CEO of a registered youth organisation (Future Leaders Initiative SL) whose mission is to protect, promote, empower and educate young people about their human rights by providing them with the necessary skills, knowledge, and platforms to curb all forms of injustice within and outside their communities.  I am currently championing an educational campaign, 'PENS UP CANES DOWN'. a movement aiming at prioritising education and prohibiting all forms of violence in all learning settings across Sierra Leone.