On May 2nd, African midwife Mary Koroma will visit the Bay Area to share her heroic story of triumph over infant and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. Nurse Mary is the leader of the Sierra Leone (West Africa) branch of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP).
As featured speaker in the “Africa’s Future in African Hands” tour, Koroma aims to promote awareness of and support for wellness and economic development programs in Africa. Sierra Leone has the world’s highest rate of maternal mortality with 1 in 8 women at risk of dying during childbirth. Sierra Leone also has one of the highest global rates of infant mortality with 123 of every 1000 babies not surviving to the age of one.
Under Nurse Mary’s leadership, AAPDEP Sierra Leone provides expectant mothers with skilled care through a number of grassroots projects. She founded the AAPDEP-WIND Health and Birth Clinic, where over two hundred patients are treated each month. AAPDEP also provides training and certification for “traditional birth attendants”, relied on by African women who are unable to access costly and distant hospitals.
Nurse Mary has spearheaded projects to raise resources to sustain the clinic while meeting the needs of the community, including four multi-acre vegetable farms, a community fishing project, a vocational institute and a nursery school.
Koroma is traveling throughout the U.S. to share her experience of community led development, where African people identify their own needs and work together to create solutions, a very different model from that of charity organizations that are often criticized for fostering dependency.
According to event organizer Camilla Hippolyte, “Despite the great barriers to health care faced by Sierra Leone’s people, this is not a tour emphasizing charity and hopelessness.
“Nurse Mary’s work demonstrates how African people in Sierra Leone, and beyond, have organized in their own interest to provide quality health care and economic development for their communities. Rather than waiting for charities or the government to implement band-aid projects at their whim, the people of Sierra Leone, under the leadership of AAPDEP and Nurse Mary, have exhibited true self-determination by coming together to create their own programs to combat the deaths of mothers and babies in their community,”
The event will take place on Wednesday, May 2nd at 6:30 p.m. in the popular community art space at 1000 Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg. It’s free and open to the public, who will have the opportunity to contribute skills or resources to the expansion of the Sierra Leone clinic. AAPDEP is actively recruiting scientists, engineers and volunteers from all fields to help develop their international projects focusing on renewable energy electrification, rainwater harvesting, well-building, water purification, ecological sanitation, farming and community health workers training.
Nurse Mary will also speak on May 6 at the regular 4:00 p.m. Sunday community meeting of the Uhuru House, located at 1245 18th Avenue South in St. Petersburg.
For more information about AAPDEP visit developmentforafrica.org.
