Zonta Service Dollars at Work in the Community

In January of 2007, Zonta Club of Yakima Valley awarded the Organization for Peace, Reconciliation & Development in Sierra Leone $2,000 for a small credit scheme and assistance for war widows from the so-called "Diamond Wars" to fund start-up businesses.

This project was brought to the club by the friend of one of our members who has traveled to Sierra Leone several times to visit with the organization that is helping these widows. She sent the following report to the club after a visit to Sierra Leone in late 2008.

January 2009 Report from Lucretia's visit to Sierra Leone

I wanted to meet with the women that Zonta has been helping. I must say that I continue to be impressed with Muckson and the ongoing way he organizes and brings new ideas to his community.  We had some time to hear how he has started a nursery of palms, and other plants for folks and is paid, only when the plant is thriving and producing. He is also now interested in making and bottling juice from the pineapple, mangoe,or orange. There may even be other things to look into.  He took a workshop in Benin for this. I really believe in the work that he is doing and the way he is empowering groups of women in villages, just like your project.

It was too far for us to travel to the village that the Zonta funds assisted, but about 10 women from that village came to talk to us and meet with us, just expressing many thanks for Zonta's help. Looking back, I now realize that when I first came to Sierra Leone that folks were stunned after the war, and just wanted a way to eat. Then they became organized and now they are beginning to see the power of their organization. They ultimately want mechanization so that their day is not so back breakingly hard. Please know that you and your Zonta women are doing a wonderful thing for women far from your own lives, but they know goodness from America and appreciate it greatly.

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