Fundraising has Begun!!! Please support our trip!

September 12, 2009

Dear friends and family,

I am writing you today to ask for your financial support for service projects that I will be completing, along with my son Zach, in Senegal, West Africa in November.

As many of you might know, I worked extensively with the African community during my time living in Summit County. There are approximately 100 African men, most of whom are from Mauritania and Senegal, who live and work in Summit County. They send their earnings back home to help support their families. Most of them are asylees in this country, and some of them have already completed the arduous process of gaining citizenship and bringing their families to the United States to live with them. For years I provided interpretation and advocacy services to my African friends, and my life was richer for the friendships I gained.

A few friends from Summit County and I hatched the idea several years ago of traveling to Senegal to go to the homes of some of our African friends. The trip was conceived as a way to provide service in their communities, and also to foster cultural understanding and exchange. This November, our dream is coming to fruition, and a group of eight of us will be traveling to Senegal in November - accompanied by two of our African friends. The trip feels to me like a chance of a lifetime, a chance not just to travel in Senegal, but to visit the homes and villages of my friends who live there.

I am going on this trip, and am taking Zach, my 9-year-old son with me. The decision to take Zach is an exciting one - Todd and I feel that it will be an amazing learning experience for him. His school is fully supportive of the trip and is working with him to incorporate his learnings into his school work. Coincidentally, his class is doing an extensive unit on Africa this fall, and we are planning to link electronically with his classroom during our trip.

We are writing you today because we need your help. As is often the case, the financial needs associated with a service project trip are substantial. While we are covering all our own travel expenses, we are seeking donations for the service projects we will complete while we are there. Specifically, we need funds to:

· Purchase and transport four low level medical kits from Project Cure (http://www.projectcure.org/). The kits and transport will cost our group $800 total but contain about $3,000 ($12,000 total!) in medical supplies for village health clinics.
· Purchase and transport school supplies for distribution in three villages (Ndindory, Doumga Ouro Alpha and Hoorefonde).
· Purchase supplies to paint three murals (one at the high school in Summit County, and two in the primary schools in Doumga Ouro Alpha and Hoorefonde). The mural project is intended to foster cultural collaboration and understanding in the villages.
· Pay for ½ the travel costs of Oumar Niang and Aliou Ba, our West African friends who will be traveling with us.

Our hope is to create a partnership with the villages that we visit so that we can continue to provide assistance and development opportunities in the years to come.

I am perhaps most excited about the opportunity to visit my good friend Mamadou’s village. I have known Mamadou since the late 1990s and have received many gifts from his family over the years. I am so excited to be able to visit his village and meet the family that I have heard so much about.

You can follow our trip – and all the preparations for it – on our blog, http://senegal-2009.blogspot.com/. I just set up the blog and posted some of the photos and stories from over the summer. We leave for our trip on November 2 and will return on November 15.

Any donation that you can provide would be most appreciated. Please send checks to my home address (contact me for the address if you don't have it). Checks may be made out to: Friends and Family of West Africa. Checks are fully tax-deductible via Father Dyer United Methodist Church in Summit County, and we will provide you documentation for your records. [Note that our trip is NOT religious. Our accounts are being held and sponsored by the church, but there is no religious element to the trip.]

Thank you very much! We look forward to hearing from you!!

Susan and Zach