Category: Letters For Liberia - Foundation For Women

Good News from Liberia about Benson Hospital!!

10/10/2018

Good news from Liberia!! From this to this!

Fire disaster in July - Hospital rebuilt by October. Thank you Foundation for Women friends and supporters! Your contributions and support help make this possible. We're so grateful for our FFW community!

Check out this article from the Daily Observer in Liberia about Benson Hospital and FFW partnering for community clinics and the fire :
https://www.liberianobserver.com/news/ffw-partnering-with-benson-hospital-to-open-community-clinic/

Update from Liberia on Benson Hospital

10/1/2018

Your generosity is making a difference immediately! We have raised several thousand dollars and construction work has begun. Every dollar makes a difference. I once again invite you to join me in this campaign. Benson Hospital is a critical hub for our FFW Community Health Clinic Project.

Please join me today by clicking on this link: http://www.foundationforwomen.org/take-action.html and pressing the donate button. Or email Cory at [email protected], or mail in your donation to PO Box 2786, La Jolla, CA 92038. Questions please call 858-483-0400.

"Ma Deborah, I have terrible news - Benson Hospital is burning down!"

7/31/2018

Benson Hospital fire

One week ago, I was preparing to leave Liberia after being there for nearly four months to launch our third product, FFW Community Health Clinics. We are assembling a Network of Excellence of health clinics surrounding a hub, Benson Hospital. And we are launching our first clinic in one of our partner schools. The Foundation for Women is now supporting microfinance for individuals, low fee independent schools, and now health clinics - creating a model of support for income generation for families, enhancing education, and raising the quality of healthcare. That morning a week ago, I received a call from one of our staff people saying, "Ma Deborah, I have terrible news - Benson Hospital is burning down!" Complete disbelief and horror!

Letters for Liberia: 15,000 microfinance loans and counting

4/29/2016

La Jolla, CA - After a very quiet and mindful morning followed by a long walk by the sea, I am musing on our one human family – and how diverse our realities are. I doubt anyone in Liberia began their day as I did. That is one of the reasons I am so committed to completing the documentary film HOPE. This is the 10th year that the Foundation for Women has been operating in Liberia. It has been an extraordinary experience getting to know and love the people of this West African nation. Our impact has been tremendous – more than 15,000 microfinance loans to women in more than 250 communities around the country. And more recently, microfinance loans to nearly 100 low fee independent school operators to enhance the education reality for the children of Liberia. All very impactful.

Letters for Liberia: Ebola is back

4/4/2016

Ebola is back. The World Health Organization declared the Ebola epidemic over in January of this year. A 30-year old woman in Liberia became the most recent Ebola statistic. The virus has now claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people in the last 28 months.

Letters for Liberia: two years ago Ebola began its unprecedented impact on Liberia.

3/28/2016

La Jolla, CA - Two years ago this month Ebola began its unprecedented impact on the people and country of Liberia. Thousands of people became infected. Thousands of people died. Nearly 5000 people survived, only to face an unbelievable reality – life with tremendous loss.

I am deeply touched by this recent article in the New York Times "Ebola, Ruthless to Families, Leaves Liberian Man Alive and Alone". I know many Ebola survivors. Yes they thank God for their good fortune, but trying to make a new normal after Ebola is not easy.

I am working closely with the men who ran the crematorium from August – December 2014 at the height of the crisis. They are heroes, not just for Liberia but for the world. Without their heroic efforts, who knows how the virus would have continued to spread, who know how much higher the death toll. Yet the men of Marshall are now outcasts; cremation in Liberia is viewed as sending a person to hell.

Letters for Liberia: One Global Family

3/22/2016

La Jolla, CA - I started today as I do every Tuesday when I am not in Liberia. At 7:00AM here in California I answer a Skype request from Anna and say hello to my dear Liberian team. Soon we ask our partners at Edify to join us. We begin a weekly global business meeting, all together thanks to Skype.

Before we began today’s agenda, our Foundation for Women Liberia COO David brought up the recent terrorist attacks in the Ivory Coast and then yesterday in Mali. He mentioned that there is a heightened security awareness now in West Africa; it is all very close to home now. We offered a pray for peace in the world, not knowing at that moment terrorists were striking again – this time in the heart of Brussels, the subway system and the airport. So many dead.

Letters for Liberia: Jerome's Amazing Story

3/19/2016

La Jolla, CA - I just received the most wonderful phone call from my friend Jerome who headed the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Liberia following the senseless and completely destructive civil war. The US Government has granted his asylum request! I wrote about Jerome and his story in my latest book, soon to be published, Trust & Transformation. When we first met in Texas in October 2015, I was overwhelmed by what I heard from him when I asked the simple question over lunch: How did you get to Indiana? This is what I heard – which completely blew me away…

Letters for Liberia: International Women’s Day!

3/6/2016

La Jolla, CA - OMG the contrast between last weekend in Liberia and this weekend in La Jolla, and several days in Geneva, IL in between – dramatic! We are all sharing one planet, with such diversity and extremes – and yet we are one human family. The extremes makes me realize how easy it is for separation, “them and us” instead of “we” which is our true reality.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day on Tuesday of this week, I am doing a life review. Since 1914, March 8th has been celebrated as International Women’s Day. I was not aware of this as a child, nor as a student or young adult, nor in my first professional career. It was only once the Foundation for Women was birthed and my focus turned to the issues of women and girls nearly 25 years ago did March 8th become a significant day in my world.

Letters for Liberia: On the way to celebrate an extra special Liberian birthday!

2/6/2016

Newark Airport, New Jersey USA - I was to be in Liberia today, hosting an 8th birthday party for my namesake Deborah. Instead I am stuck here since Thursday due to a mechanical failure on the plane from Chicago to Brussels. And since Brussels Air is the only carrier that can take me to and from Liberia now post-Ebola, I have no option but to breathe and wait. Hopefully tonight I will be able to fly overnight to Brussels and then connect to the Sunday Brussels flight to Monrovia