Letter of thanks

Dear Susan and Luke,

Last week, on behalf of YMCA Liberia, I accepted the Rotary International/Liberia’s Community Service award at its Centennial Anniversary commemoration. Thinking about what we have accomplished in the last year, I realize that because of my Christmas travel and the rush of activities here, I didn’t use the holiday season as I should have to thank people like you who were so important to our successes. As you know, 2004 was a good year — we received our first UN grants, brought on new staff and consultants, increased our membership and activities nation-wide, and were recognized for our reconciliation activities after the October 28-29 riots. Our post-riot activities alone brought us two unsolicited grants from a USAID contractor to do peace and reconciliation activities at designated “flash point” communities. What a shame that we do not stop often enough to thank you for what you have done toward this success.

You have been extremely supportive of our work here. Luke’s time visiting with the UN organizations in Monrovia and his assistance at meetings Lyn Gray and I attended in the States in September are just two examples. Shortly we will be benefiting from two training programs that are gifts of PDA. Your friendship and concern have meant a lot to us.

I hope you have a very good year in 2005.

Sincerely,

Peter

Peter Kamei, National General Secretary, YMCA Liberia

YMCA 2004 activities

Since the end of Liberia’s fourteen-year civil war, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) of Liberia has focused its efforts on relief and services to displaced citizens. It has managed a center for 3,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in its compound and provided emergency feeding, literacy, and recreation programs in eight IDP camps in five counties. It emphasized children’s needs in two IDP camps by establishing child friendly spaces and engaging the children in normalizing activities. In addition, it provided educational support in the form of workshops for teachers, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, and feeding for students.

Two YMCA branches in Nimba County operated emergency transit centers for Liberian returnees and refugees transiting from other countries in 2003. The centers provided five days of accommodation; two meals/day; emergency health care; and HIV/AIDS education, counseling to 5,525 people. They also established three emergency mobile mini-clinics serving 73 villages in two counties. Because this area was cut off from national headquarters at the time, the drugs were sent overland via Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Because of the absence of government services over a long period, the YMCA organized Community Service Clean Up Campaigns in 44 sites in Monrovia, Kakata, and Ganta, involving 125 young people.

Throughout 2004 the YMCA distributed emergency food rations from the United Nations (UN) World Food Program (WFP) in four counties. In collaboration with UN WFP and UN Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO) it distributed seed rice, food stocks (to protect seed supplies), and tools to farmers in three districts of Nimba County. It continued to operate ten schools at low cost for war-affected children as well as to give educational and feeding support to the IDP school at Maimu 2. The YMCA trained and deployed teams of three workers each to ten varied sites around the country for psychosocial programs focused on enabling residents to move through their trauma and losses and become more capable of taking control of the rehabilitation of their communities.