By Tycie Horsley | Development Director
Thank you for your continued support and interest in the Marshall Legacy Institute (MLI) and our humanitarian programs. With your generous gifts, we are able to continue providing critically needed medical care and vocational training for landmine survivors around the world. Through our Children Against Mines Program (CHAMPS) and Survivors Assistance programs, we provide mine survivors in countries like Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen with vocational training classes that enhance their skills in sewing, computers, electrical repair, poultry production, and much more. Additionally, each year, our Mine Risk Education classes reach thousands of people living in mine-affected communities, and we have helped hundred of severely injured survivors by providing them with critically needed medical care, prostheses, and mobility equipment.
For example, in Yemen, our programs are helping people like Wardah, a 35-year-old Yemeni woman who stepped on a landmine when she was 16 years old while she was helping her mother collect water from the well. At the time, she was carrying 20 liters of water and thought she would take a shortcut off the road to shorten her journey. Along the way, she tried to avoid the pieces of metal that poked out of the ground from the recent rain, but there was one piece that she saw too late. ”Next,” she says, “everything went quiet… I didn’t feel any pain at the time; I was only scared… I watched the sky and waited for the angels to take me.”
After losing her right leg in the explosion, she struggled to maintain hope for a bright future. "The first year was the worst," she said, ”I was thinking that death would be more merciful to me, but my feelings have since changed, and, after receiving a new leg and participating in MLI's classes, I now feel that I can do something for my family, myself, and others.”
In Yemen, MLI collaborates with our in-country partner, the Yemen Association for Landmine and UXO Survivors (YALS), and with funds raised from private donors, MLI helps landmine survivors like Wardah by providing them with medical assistance and the vocational training that they need to make them more successful in the job market. Last year, through this program, Wardah received a prosthetic leg and participated in MLI's computer training class and, with the knowledge and skills she acquired through the training, she secured a job at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
Today, thanks to the prosthetic leg and the training she received in the computer class, Wardah says she has regained her hope for the future and is very grateful to everyone who has helped her. Thank YOU for your continued support and for your generous gifts to support MLI's humanitarian programs that enable us to assist people like Ms. Allau.
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