December 2014

Dear Friends of Liberia:

Thanks to your incredible generosity, and three amazing fundraising events, we are within reach of our Ebola Relief Goal of $100,000.

Seven organizations have been the beneficiaries so far. The dramatic decline in cases in the capital, Monrovia, is a testament to the all-out effort of many every-day heroes. The battle is not over. Outbreaks are occurring in out-of-the-way places and could rekindle the spread at any time. Our latest recipients have been community-based efforts that will deliver the prevention messages through trusted neighbors, community leaders and educators. They are setting up chlorinated hand-washing stations in public places and trekking into remote villages with plastic buckets and dry chlorine. They are feeding those in quarantine and persuading others to let bodies be removed and cremated rather than washed and buried.

We have raised $95,000, $35,000 from general funds and $60,000 from donations. $58,000 is already at work on the frontlines.

Our first beneficiaries were Doctors Without Borders, for the treatment center in Monrovia, and Global Health Ministries, which airlifted personal protective clothing to Curran and Phebe Hospitals, so they could protect their health workers from incoming cases. That was months before the government aid arrived.

Catholic Hospital received money to retrain their health workers for the reopening of the hospital and their network of clinics. This was before their traditional donors got back onboard.

Women’s Campaign International and its Rural Women’s Program were able to set up an emergency fund for their network of 150 communities throughout Liberia. Prior to the crisis, community leaders were being trained in leadership. More than 30 communities throughout the heart of Liberia have applied for and received support for prevention, sensitization, quarantine care and body removal. A chart of their activities is on www.FOL.org

Refuge Place International, a maternal and child health clinic in Chicken Soup Factory, was funded for protective materials and staff training to get the clinic reopened in this impoverished neighborhood of Monrovia. Since reopening Oct. 6, they have given pre-natal care to hundreds of women and treated hundreds of young children for various childhood maladies, mainly malaria.

Our latest grant recipients are education organizations that have trained their skills on health education and prevention activities. Education First in Maryland County is determined to keep their communities Ebola free with public hand-washing stations and door-to-door prevention advice. Liberia Education Project head carries plastic buckets and chlorine into remote areas of Bong County where the prevention messages have yet to take hold.

As Ebola retreats into the rural areas again, community leaders are taking responsibility for seeing that all their residents, neighbors and visitors are reporting illnesses and deaths and that persons with Ebola symptoms are isolated and reported to response teams.

The good news is that the recently built U.S. treatment centers are reporting empty beds. There are more ambulances and body removal teams. Clinics and hospitals are able to treat some of the more common diseases that are rampant at this time of year.

Friends of Liberia has started cautiously looking beyond the Ebola crisis to the problems that will result from a lost school year, from the scores of new orphans and the loss of jobs and food sources. Committees of members are exploring a family literacy initiative, a training program for entrepreneurship and new businesses and how we can support the rebuilding of the health infrastructure.

One thing hasn’t changed. Liberians are resilient and determined to overcome the most unimaginable obstacles. Our Small Grants Program continues to get proposals for community-based initiatives that will help Liberians help themselves.

Help us make our goal of $100,000 for Ebola relief and to fund the post-Ebola work that will give hope to our former neighbors, students, colleagues and friends as they emerge from a national nightmare.