By Emily Bell | Project Leader
Dear More Than Me Family new and old,
Thank you for all your support as we’ve worked to fight Ebola. When More Than Me began, our mission was clear: to get girls from the West Point slum in Liberia off the street and into school by providing them with an education and supplementary services like healthcare and meals to support them for long-term success. Our goal was to ensure that when they graduated, they would decide what came next in their lives.
Our More Than Me Academy did just that last year for 124 girls. But since Ebola came to Liberia in March, it became clear that to ensure opportunity for our students in the future, and to keep them safe, our goals would have to evolve. As a result, we've expanded our mission in the time of Ebola because we feel that as long as there is Ebola in Liberia, our girls are at risk. So we are fighting with everything we are made of to end this epidemic that terrorizes our children and their communities.
Our Community Based Coalition brings together community groups, local leaders, government offices, and NGOs to stop the spread of Ebola in Liberia. Our home healthcare teams made up of nurses, identify and treat the sick and send them to a clinic via our ambulance if they exhibit any Ebola symptoms. Contact tracing teams make sure to quarantine anyone who’s been exposed to Ebola to stop the virus' spread. And then there’s our ambulance team who risk their lives everyday by transporting possible Ebola patients to clinics.
With More Than Me’s coalition, we’ve lowered the number of Ebola cases in West Point already. There were 30 possible cases on September 19th, which went down to 14 on October 17th. We’ve already visited 3,472 homes and 7,581 residents. We are now also employing the use of the Ebola care app to help us track patients more efficiently. Read more about that on GlobalGiving's Tools & Training blog.
Even though fighting Ebola wasn’t our original mission, we’ve re-focused our efforts and it’s paying off: our team is literally saving lives. The Ministry of Health has even asked us to expand our coalition-based plan to five other hot zones in and around Monrovia. Thanks to our coalition, we are able to empower lcoal community leaders to end Ebola in their communities; and most importantly, the home healthcare, contact tracing, and ambulance teams have rebuilt trust within the community to end Ebola for good.
Thank you again for your support. We couldn't do our work without you!
In this together,
Emily and the More Than Me Team
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