The past week has been crazy! Has it been nutty for you as well?
I have been spending a lot of time with different folks to celebrate my recent 35th birthday (a week ago).
(Most people say I look totally different than I did a year ago because I’m growing out my hair! It hasn’t been this long in about 15 years and I’m keeping it.)
More on all the life stuff like that in an upcoming blog post.
Today I wanted to put out a request for my birthday.
Last year for my birthday, I invited people to provide me with a condolence coffee since my father had just passed away. Thanks so much to all that did.
Now, I am in a much better place than I was a year ago, and I want to raise money for a really good cause.
Have you ever gotten that feeling that it is all on you?
A lot of that feeling is landing on Ariefa Kumara, the director for Her Future Foundation, right now, so I’m trying to raise $600 to help out.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you might remember I did a fundraiser for this organization this spring.
The organization Her Future Foundation (HFF) has been founded to educate and empower girls so that they can be liberated from child marriage, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and other harmful practices in Sierra Leone–where girls as young as 8 are married to adult men.
Ariefa founded HFF and now runs two schools that enroll over 300 children, both boys and girls, in addition to other programs.
This spring we raised $1000 (above our goal) to get them NGO status, so they can continue to expand, assist vulnerable girls who have no parents, and provide more services.
What happened:
Last month the director Ariefa had a medical emergency
The nonprofit is dependent on his well-being because he’s the one who can connect the girls in Sierra Leone with funding from international donors.
There is currently no funding but the organization has NGO status so with a little more time they should be able to receive it.
He’s in the middle of lining up new funding for the organization by working with officials in the UN (United Nations) World Population Fund and the European Union. Light is at the end of the tunnel!!
But in the meantime, the emergency put him in the hospital with malaria.
He needed help so a team of donors got him emergency funding for medical expenses. Sierra Leone doesn’t give free medical care, or even treat patients without payment. I donated $300 to gofundme and directly to him because his health is essential.
The good news and bad news
The good news is he is in a more physically stable place where he is not going to die, but his well-being is still being dinged.
The bad news is he needs $600 USD more to pay the final hospital bill.
The hospital workers have been repeatedly verbally aggressive and mean awaiting his payment in full. They won’t accept a partial payment.
The personal attacks are affecting his focus and mental health trying to get funding for the organization.
Going forward
We are in the home stretch finding new funding for HFF but since the last grant ended in 2021, Ariefa has worked without pay, which is why he needs help now.
He really has so many people in his community, including all the girls, looking to him for guidance and assistance. He’s done SO much for girlkind, pulling girls out of situations where they’d be sexually assaulted, married as a child, or initiated into FGM ceremonies. Instead he puts them in school.
I really want to help him out as a thank you for his service.
Can you help him to get this last bit of funding to pay this bill?
Not only will it help Ariefa, but it will help the girls as well.
He can put more energy and focus into the home stretch of representing Her Future Foundation and getting international aid.
And it will be that relief of knowing he isn’t in this all alone! He’s got people who want to see this mission succeed.
Want more information?
Check out this information about Her Future Foundation:
website: https://hffgirls.org/
Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hffsalone/
You can also shoot me a message by the contact me page.
(Yes, this guy is the real deal! I know people are wary of scams but I met him through my contacts in DC Nonprofits. I also worked with a state department official who visited him in Sierra Leone in person and attested to the amazing work he does there.)
Donate:
Here is the fundraiser that has been started for his healthcare here: GO FUND ME LINK
(It has $390 raised as of this writing, and we hope to raise another $600 to get it to $1000 total.)
Thanks for supporting if you can–it’s not really for me, but I’ll be really thankful if we can do this.
