Message from the President

As we head to the Twin Cities for our third annual National Convention during which we will be conducting the second general elections since the founding of FELMAUSA, we will like to say in our native tongue, “Muaye aye fola foliko nyumala. Alla muya denkola tahnyefeh. Alla moibella kana.”

As we head for this very important occasion, we want to give you some progress reports of the past two years since we assumed the responsibility of leading this organization. These past two years have been very challenging but we consider it a privilege to serve our community.

The two years have been a learning experience for us and we have learnt a great deal along the way. When we assumed the responsibility of leading FELMAUSA, there were some internal disagreements in various places.

These were the results of divergent views as to how to move our community forward. All of us on both sides of the divide love our community and we all want the best for our people. However, we deferred on how to advance the aspirations of the community. It is through this charged atmosphere that FELMAUSA was born.

As the first leadership team, we decided to focus on building the structure of the organization based on the things that unite us as opposed to things that have the propensity to further divide us as a community. We have worked tirelessly, with great commitment to build what we have today. Through vigorous efforts in less than two years, our organization- FELMAUSA- is a household name today in the USA, back home in Liberia and elsewhere around the world. FELMAUSA has become an organization everyone is proud of today and wants to be identified with. That could not be possible without the dedicated sacrifices of all of us from the East Coast to the Midwest and down South, who believe in the mission of FELMAUSA.

For all the people that supported us in this endeavor, I want to extend to you our sincere thanks and appreciation on behalf of the executive leadership of FELMAUSA. Even those that disagreed with us before and have now shown some appreciation for our efforts, we welcome them all. We all belong to this community and together we can take FELMAUSA and the entire Liberian Mandingoes at home and abroad to a nobler destiny. We have malice towards none, but love in our hearts for all.

FELMAUSA is relatively a young organization. One of the great success stories of these two years is the website that has positively promoted the image of our community. Because of this, we have been able to cover a distance in two years that has taken other organizations 30 or more years to reach. For this remarkable achievement, we thank the Public Relation Committee and particularly our webmasters. The good job they are doing reflects credit not only on them but the entire community.

Through our vigorous campaign, we have created greater awareness about the issues that confront us as a community and how to tackle those issues. We have not just sat here in the states and feel comfortable with the title of being called president. We have made two trips to Liberia, our homeland with no cost to FELMAUSA and the sole purpose of those trips was to take FELMAUSA to our people on the ground.

All the efforts we are making here are geared towards finding solutions to the problem that we face as a community in Liberia. During those trips, we met our counterparts of the National Mandingo Caucus of Liberia, The Concerned Mandingo Society of Liberia, elders and opinion leaders. We also during those trips met some important national figures with whom we discussed issue regarding our dear country, Liberia and the role we can play in the reconstruction efforts of our homeland. We want to take this time to thank the National Mandingo Caucus of Liberia for creating the environment that allowed us to meet with some of the prominent national figures of Liberia. We are exceedingly grateful for their hospitality in hosting a dinner in our honor during our outreach visits back home.

Through these bold and selfless initiatives in the USA and back home, FELMAUSA has become the beacon of hope for our people everywhere in the world. We want to also thank the Concerned Mandingo Society of Liberia and the Mandingo students at the University of Liberia and the various junior colleges for generously welcoming and honoring our invitations during our last visit to Liberia. We appreciate the good job our representative in Monrovia, Amara Kenneh has been playing. He is the point man for the FELMAUSA scholarship assistance project.

The center-piece of our two years efforts is the FELMAUSA educational assistance initiative. This is geared towards educational capacity building of our community. This is based on the realization that we lag behind other Liberian communities in education. This has put us at a disadvantage and the only corrective measure we can take is to provide educational opportunity to our brothers and sisters who have the desire and motivation for learning. As part of this education program, we launched a scholarship fund drive recently on our website. Cont ributions to this fund drive have ranged from $15.00 to $500.00. We thank everyone who has contributed to this fund drive, especially our sister Mawata Fofana of Las Vegas, who has to this date made the single largest donation.

Today, we have identified the first batch of students who should be the beneficiaries of this educational assistance program. We have received the forms from Monrovia, Liberia with the information of the students attending the University of Liberia and other private colleges and universities as well as some technical schools. I believe all of us will identify one or two of our own relatives on the list. We can now identify the students by names and pictures who are to be the beneficiaries of our scholarship assistance program.  It is our hope that with the information we have now, many of us will continue to support the education assistance program and those who haven't done so should be encouraged to do so.

On March 28, 2009, FELMAUSA’s Women Wing was formally launched in Newark, New Jersey. Among the dignitaries that graced the occasion was Councilman Donald Payne of the Newark City Council. During the program, the Councilman, on behalf of the City Council of Newark read and presented a proclamation. The other highlight of this event was the recognition and appreciation of graduates in our community. Brothers and sisters that graduated from high schools, colleges and universities received certificates of appreciation for their academic achievements. We are proud of this project as one of our most remarkable achievements and for that we want to thank our courageous women of FELMAUSA Women Wing for their tireless efforts in making this program a success.

Through our Special Envoy, we were able to establish relationship with our brothers and sisters in the Republic of Guinea and the West African sub-region. Even if we may be in different camps now in this election, we will not be doing justice if we don’t mention this as one of the progress reports of the past two years.

A little while ago, we negotiated with one of the local Universities in the Philadelphia area and obtained thousands of books which will be shipped to Liberia and placed at our future Liberian Mandingo Cultural Centers in Monrovia. This cultural center will be a place where people will learn about the historical contributions of Mandingoes to the making of Liberia.

We are proud of these achievements and because of them, everyone is now proud to identify with FELMAUSA. This shows that as a community, we belong to each other and TOGETHER, WE CAN DO ANYTHING. We are not enemies; we just have divergent views as how to move the community forward. In this light, we can say, if we couldn’t have achieved anything in these two years, the level of interest everyone has developed in FELMAUSA today is our proudest accomplishment.

It’s worth mentioning that all these achievements would not have been possible without the supports from Board of Directors and various committees. We thank each and every one of you for giving us the opportunity to serve you in these two years.

Having enumerated our successes for the past two years, we will like to ask you to give us the opportunity so we can continue the great works we have started. All we are asking is simply that you give us another two years to complete the job we have started. We are not in this race for any political reason. Political positions in Liberia are not the reasons we have been making all these sacrifices. We are in it because we want to help our people. More than anyone else in this race, we are asking you to look at the records of what we have accomplished in these two years. We don’t just have fancy plans but we have concrete records that you all can attest to.

By way of platform, we will like to make the following points for your perusal and consideration:

Help Us to Complete What We Started

In the last two years, we have been laying the foundation of FELMAUSA with total commitment to the educational, social, political empowerment of our people. This is an ongoing process and need a committed person with the vision to drive progress that is needed in our community. We are in the middle of the raging river and we must continue to sail upstream. To do this you need someone who has been tested and has something to point to.

Capacity Building through Education Assistance

With a background in education and knowing how far behind we are in the area of education in Liberia, we will continue with this initiative of providing educational opportunity to our brothers and sisters in Liberia. We will encourage greater school enrolment of the Mandingo girls because they are our sisters, daughters and partners. They need to be educated if we are to make any progress as a community. If our women are educated, our sons and daughters will be encouraged to go to school. We will make FELMAUSA Woman Wing a great part of this effort. While we are working to provide educational opportunity to our brothers and sisters in Liberia, we also going to carry out educational awareness campaign in our various communities in the US. During such forum, we will provide scholarship information to our members, motivate and help them to fill out necessary forms.

Economic Empowerment

We will empower our people by organizing annual forum during which we will invite investment experts to educate us about various investment opportunities here in the US as well as in Liberia. Another way to economically empower our community is to set up a committee that will research job information and opportunities in our various localities.

Civil Right Advocacy

We will advocate for the civil rights of all Liberians, especially our fellow Mandingoes who face many issues such as harassment at immigra tion checkpoints and continuous problem of land occupation in Nimba County and elsewhere in Liberia. We encourage the current efforts of talks among the various tribes of Nimba County regarding the land dispute. We are happy that a committee headed by our friend and brother Musa Bility is working on this matter. We will be conscioutising our people about their civil rights as Liberians. We will set up the Liberian Mandingo Legal Defend Fund that will provide assistance to our people in need. Through the National Mandingo Legal Defense Fund, we will educate our people about their fundamental rights and civil responsibilities as citizens.

Continue Outreach Efforts

There is no disunity in our community. What we have is divergent views on issues that concern all of us. We have tried with mixed success and failure to find common ground in dealing with some of these issues. We were engaged in the New York disagreement more than three years before the birth of FELMAUSA. It is through our initiative that both sides of the disagreement in New York came to Philadelphia in 2004 to resolve their differences. We got our elders like Kalifala Toure, Imam Sheik Sherif, and Siaka Keita involved in the mediation efforts. For some obvious reasons, that did not end the impasse in New York. Through our continuous efforts, New York is now a full fledged chapter member of FELMAUSA.

We made similar outreach efforts in New Jersey, and the Mid-Western states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. When we went to all these places, our intention was not to run campaign. So when we talk about reaching out, we are not just talking theory. Despite the difficulty of resolving some of these disagreements that predates the formation of FELMAUSA, we have continued to engage them while at the same time building FELMAUSA.

Promoting Our Rich Cultural Heritage

We have a very unique culture that is interwoven in the reach history of West Africa and Liberia. It is our responsibility to preserve our rich cultural and religious heritage. That’s why we have envisioned building the Liberian Mandingo Cultural Center where people will learn about our unique cultural and religious heritage and the contributions the Mandingoes have made and continue to make to the building of Liberia.

Total Engagement with Local Chapters