AAPDEP: Help Support

$4000 Needed for Travel to Sierra Leone in November

uhuru! The All African People’s Development & Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) is calling on all friends, members and supporters to help with urgently needed resources to send an AADPEP leadership contingent to Sierra Leone. The purpose of the November trip is four-fold: 1) to finalize the plan of action and timeline for building the new AAPDEP-WIND birthing center,  2)to initiate plans for a 2012 AAPDEP winter project that would bring volunteers from throughout the world into Sierra Leone to participate in AAPDEP healthcare and agricultural work,  3) to establish the  organizational and legal infrastructure necessary to build our economic development capacity in the country, and 4) to document AAPDEP’s work through video and photographs that will be used in the creation of a short film on the fight to improve birth outcomes for African women and babies. In the six months since Nurse Midwife Mary Koroma’s return to Sierra Leone following the successful US-wide Stop the Hemorrhaging Tour, AAPDEP has made incredible advancements in our work to improve the lives and health of pregnant women and children in the country. Under Nurse Mary’s dynamic leadership, AAPDEP-Sierra Leone has been established in four cities and has a diverse membership of almost 500 people.  Work is currently underway to renovate the existing clinic inAllentown, now known as the AAPDEP-WIND Health and Birth Center (AHBC), even as planning and fundraising is ongoing for the new facility slated for completion in early 2013.  Despite the national average of one in eight women dying in childbirth, Nurse Mary and AAPDEP TBA’s have helped to deliver hundreds of  healthy babies over the last six months, including 2 sets of twins-- without one fatality! In Mokanji, we have launched the AAPDEP Vocational Institute (AVI).  AVI opened its doors on September 26th with seventy registered students who are now receiving training in midwifery (Traditional Birth Attendant training), carpentry, catering, craft making, gara tye dying, tailoring and hair dressing.  A preschool has also been opened alongside the AVI for our students who are in need of childcare. There are currently 20 children ages 0-4 attending our preschool. It doesn’t end there. AAPDEP-SL has established a 2-acre cassava farm in Mokanji, a 4-acre corn farm in Moriba Town and a 3-acre ground nut farm in Makolo, all in an effort to address food security and economic development for our members and the broader community. AAPDEP’s programs in Sierra Leone are important advancements not only for AAPDEP itself, but for the dispersed nation of African people around the world.  Our work is a livingembodiment of African self-sufficiency and self-determination and serves as an example of what is possible when African people unite ourselves, our skills and resources in the interests of our people!  The November organizing trip will play a critical role in taking this work even further and four thousand dollars ($4,000) is needed urgently by October 31st to help with the cost of plane tickets and in-country travel. Please make a tax deductible donation today! Spread the word to friends and family! Online donations can be made at www.developmentforafrica.org . Checks and money orders made out to “AAPDEP” can be sent to: AAPDEP Attn: Sierra Leone Trip P.O. Box 17014 Huntsville, AL 35810. As always, AAPDEP thanks you- our supporters, members and friends- for helping us to continue our work toward development for liberation! Uhuru!