Come on, now, follow his lead!
Ed Sheeran has been filming with Comic Relief in Liberia’s slums. After meeting with JD who’d been living on the streets for six months, the “Shape Of You” singer was deeply moved by the trauma and hardships the little boy had been through. As Ed was getting prepped to leave, he couldn’t get himself to turn away from JD and his friends and took the decision to fund a place for them to stay with someone who can take care of them.
“Once we’re done here we’re going to pack up the camera and these guys are gonna to be sleeping in a canoe with a lot of dangerous people about. Really does not feel right leaving at all. I mean, the only thing you can do is help them, which we should. My natural instinct is to just put them in a car and just take them and just put them in a hotel until we can get them sorted,” said Ed.
Back in the studio, Ed revealed that hearing that the boys were “raped” by the older boys while they slept rough, had pushed him to make this decision. He wanted to help JD realize his dreams of going to school and becoming president after his father had deserted him and he’d lost his family to Ebola.
“Can we do that? Can I pay to put them in a house until we get them in a school?” he asked.
Watch Sheeran interact with JD and other Liberian street kids below: