N'tuma Bangura, 22, of Freetown, is the first recipient of "Leah's Dream" scholarship in Sierra Leone. She tested into the second year of her nursing program.

We are lucky to be working with Abdul Koligbonda Lebbie, who runs the Network on Disadvantaged Children. He located four more young women who are highly qualified and keen to attend college. Since this is our first year in Sierra Leone, we chose to select one scholarship recipient. Next year, we’ll look at our funds and Ms. Bangura’s success and decide how to continue. We are committed to funding Ms. Bangura’s entire university education.

Here’s what she wrote in her application essay (without corrections):

“I believe education is a right for all. This is appeared in the human rights documents Universal Declaration Human Rights–UDHR, UN Security Resolution 1325.

As an educated nurse/medical doctor, I personally will benefit economically as I will be well paid and will increase my respect in society. This will be able to help me educate my future children who will not suffer like me in terms of marginalisation.

I believe education will help me  rise up above poverty and become a pillar in my family to help others.

It is my dream to establish a medical centre that will cater for the less previledge. I will also use my skill to increase awareness on health and sanitation in my community. My focus will be on maternal health, infant mortality, malaria and HIV/AIDS.

As a teenage girl, I grew up in a community plague with high rate of illiteracy and teenage pregnancy. It is my desire to mitigate the above situation with will hlep to increase participation in my community and Sierra Leone as a whole.”

We are honored to help support Ms. Bangura’s pursuit of her dream.

This African proverb in Betty Press’ new book, I Am Because We Are, speaks directly to our goals and mission with Isis Initiative, Inc.

With Betty’s help and contacts, we are expanding our program to Sierra Leone and preparing to review applications from several candidates for our next scholarship.

Leah Mamhot and her mother, Rosalia Mamhot, 73, with Isis Initiative founder Cheryl Hatch, waiting for a ride to town. They are going to attend Parents' Tribute Day at La Salle University in Ozamiz City in the Philippines, where Leah lives and received her degree in Elementary Education with a major in English.

Next month Isis Initiative, Inc. will celebrate three years of service.

It started as a gesture of thanks that became the seed of an idea that bloomed into a grass-roots international non-profit.

Many of you know the story: how I skipped covering the Iraq War only to injure myself in the Philippines. The young woman, Leah Mamhot, who sat by my hospital bedside, had dreams of attending college and becoming a teacher. The tuition and fees were beyond her means; I offered to pay her way.

When friends–and strangers–heard the story of Leah’s dream and her hard work, they offered to help.

I created Isis Initiative, Inc. with a lot of support from friends and family. From lawyers at Jeanne Smith and Associates in Corvallis, Oregon to Louise Barker and Mike Corwin at OSU Federal Credit Union to Mike McInally, publisher of the Corvallis Gazette-Times, who ran a December holiday story about our fledgling efforts.

Isis Initiative, Inc. is a shared accomplishment. And there are three people–friends and former colleagues–who stepped up and have stayed the course. They have volunteered and served as board members since day one.

Samanda Dorger teaches journalism at Solano Community College in Napa, California, and works with the students at their college newspaper, The Tempest. Sam and I attended grad school in the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, worked at the Naples Daily News (FL) together and have found ways to meet for adventures in Paris, Lahaina and Anchorage over the years of our friendship. Sam is our treasurer…though her real talent and contribution is design. She created our website and our newsletter.

Melanthia Peterman is a my former colleague at the Associated Press, a wife and mother of two who runs her own business, Little Sprouts Gardening. Melanthia is our secretary and she has offered me the sanctuary and hospitality of her home and garden many times. We frequently hold our board meetings in a teleconference from her Seattle dining room.

I’ve known Alice Anderson since she was a baby. Her mother and father and I attended Oregon State University together…and worked on the college paper. Alice is a senior at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. She brings youth and fresh ideas to our table. She created our Facebook presence and convinced me to embrace social media.

This month, I’m sending them my thanks..and a gift…for their service.

A young girl in Mali looks at herself in a mirror. This photograph appears in the new book, "I am Because We Are" by Betty Press.

I found the perfect gift…a book by women celebrating women and their wisdom: “I Am Because We Are” by Betty Press.

I first met Betty Press when she and her husband, Bob, were living in Nairobi, Kenya and working for the Christian Science Monitor. We were all covering the famine and civil war in Somalia. They were generous, kind hosts, offering me shelter and hospitality in their home when I would return from the madness of Mogadishu.

Bob and Betty returned to Africa, this time to Sierra Leone, in 2008, when Bob received a Fulbright. They have now helped us identify five young women in Sierra Leone who are candidates for scholarships.

Betty’s photographs and her beautiful book are indeed the perfect gift. Purchasing the books, I support the decades of humanitarian and documentary work of an esteemed colleague. Offering the books, I share the stories and wisdom of African women with my friends, who’ve joined me on a journey to help women get access to a college education…and wherever that journey may lead them.

Thank you for your service. Samanada. Melanthia. Alice. Betty.

A Nigerian woman cleans rice in this photograph by Betty Press. View Betty's work and her new book at http://www.africanwisdominimageandproverb.com.

Lillian G. N. Baio poses for a portrait in her Sunday best in Sierra Leone. Lillian has begun the application process for a scholarship from Isis Initiative, Inc. She wants to pursue studies in Peace and Conflict. Photo by Betty Press

We are excited to announce we plan to offer a scholarship to a young woman in Sierra Leone. Lillian G. N. Baio completed secondary school with financial support through a program and grant by the International Rescue Committee.  She wanted to continue her education, yet there were no additional funds available. She wants to major in Peace and Conflict studies and we want to help.

Sierra Leone is slowly recovering from 11 years of brutal civil war, which ended in 2002. If you’ve seen the movie “Blood Diamond” or read “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah, you know something of the war’s depravity and devastation. The average annual income is Sierra Leone is $220. The adult literacy rate is 27 percent (Source: UNESCO EFA Monitoring Report 2009), one of the lowest in the world.

We are grateful to friends of Cheryl Hatch, Bob and Betty Press, who recommended Lillian for a scholarship. Bob and Betty worked for years as journalists in Africa. When Bob received a Fulbright grant, the couple spent a year from 2008 to 2009 in Sierra Leone.

We expect to pay about $850 annually for tuition, room and board, books, uniforms and other expenses.

You can learn more about Isis Initiative, Inc. and our work at www.isisinitiative.org. You’ll find a link to our PayPal account if you’d like to support Lillian’s education.

At first, we had a hard time talking over the noise of barking dogs in her neighborhood. We shared news. Her mother remains paralyzed on her left side. She can longer eat solid food. Leah said she has to blend everything, even rice, to feed her mother.

She’s happy because she got another temporary teaching job at a private school, Medina College, in Ozamis City. She teaches K-1 and K-2 in the morning and K 3-5 in the afternoon. The salary is much lower than a public school job. She makes 5,550 pesos (about $110/month) compared to the 17,000 pesos with benefits she would make at a public school.

Leah has taught as five schools in the past three years since her college graduation. Twice she was in line for a public school position. Twice  local politics and nepotism blocked the path to her dream.

On Feb. 18, the administration will meet again. There are two open positions in her local school. It’s Leah’s turn. She’s daring to dream once more.

When she had a temporary public school job, Leah was able to pay for her mother’s medicine and medical bills. She paid for her brother Benjy’s college tuition. He was studying criminal justice and planned to have a career as a police officer. She made improvements to their small cinder block home, including indoor plumbing and a C.R. (comfort room, i.e. toilet). I joked and told her that I didn’t have a C.R.; I explained the outhouse behind my cabin.

“You don’t have to go very far in the cold, do you?” she asked.

She’s grateful for her job at the private school, but Benjy had to quit his studies. He just started a new job as a janitor. Working six days a week, he’ll earn about the same salary as Leah, 5,500 pesos/month.

“Pray for me please, Cheryl.”

Leah asked me to pray that her dream will come true, that she can get a teaching job in a public school. She’ll have a salary that will support her family. Her brother will be able to resume his studies. She’ll have benefits and a classroom of her own.

That’s always been Leah’s dream.

“I don’t want to be a principal or an administrator. I want to be a teacher in my own classroom,” she said.

Please join me in praying for Leah, praying that the dream she’s worked so hard for, the dream she’es held on to for years, will come true.

Proceedings:

I called the meeting called to order at 12:05 p.m. We approved the Aug. 1, 2010 meeting minutes.

Old Business:

Oct. 12 fundraiser in Corvallis brought in $940.

Hatch hired Bev Brassfield, a Corvallis bookkeeper, to handle the record keeping for the account, starting with our current fiscal year, which began on July 1, 2010.

New Business:

Marathel Guinsayao is moving into her second semester of second year at Western Mindanao State University.

Leah’s mom had a stroke and has been unable to gather and update on Marathel. She plans to travel to visit her before Christmas and pay her board fees and collect her most recent grade reports.

Isis Initiative has until June to find a new candidate to send to university. If we miss the June deadline, our next deadline will be September 2011.

We plan to focus our efforts at LaSalle University Ozamis City. We were excited to offer a scholarship to Marthel, who is attending university on the Zamboanga Peninsula, near her family’s mountain farm. We have discovered that maintaining communications and monitoring her progress is difficult from a distance. We have chosen to recruit scholarship applicants who are interested in attending La Salle University Ozamis, the university Leah Mamhot attended and from which she received her diploma in 2007.

We discussed the possible uses for the raw video of Hatch’s trip to the Philippines for Leah’s graduation in 2007. We plan to turn it into a educational DVD and a potential fund-raising tool. Anderson suggested having a student volunteer cut the video and produce a short (three to four minutes) promotional piece. I will explore the possiblity of finding a student a University of Alaska Fairbanks, where I’m currently serving as the Snedden Chair in the Department of Journalism.

Website development: Isis board members will keep control of web maintenance until we have more material to showcase. At that point, Isis Initiative will revisit outsourcing development.

Fund-raising

My brother, J Hatch, has donated proceeds of sales from his CD. You can download songs at his website. (If you launch the music player after entering the site, you can listen to three cool original tunes while you browse.)  We will begin planning next Corvallis concert and intend for it to become an annual fund-raising event. The J Hatch Trio performance in 2011 will be the third annual concert. The trio played at Block 15 on Mardi Gras night 2009 and at the home of Beth Rietveld and Sam Stern on October 16, 2010.

Newsletter

Peterman will create our first newsletter and have it ready to mail to our donors and supporters in January 2011.

Our meeting adjourned at 12:50 p.m.

Ashley A. loves Egypt as much as I do. She’s already visited Egypt once and longs to return.

She’s a student in the JRN 421 (Journalism in Perspective) class I’m teaching at University of Alaska Fairbanks. One day in class, I told the story of how I adored Mighty Isis as a young girl. For me, she represented a powerful and beautiful woman, the perfect role model. And, I, too, love all things Egyptian: the history, the culture, the art, the mythology.

When I named my nonprofit Isis Initiative, Inc., I had the mythology of Isis, the Egyptian goddess, in mind: a powerful woman who gathered what had been broken and scattered (the body parts of her murdered husband, Osiris) and breathed new life into them. I thought Isis was the perfect symbol for an organization created by a former war photographer to help fund scholarships for women who had the desire but not the resources to pursue a college education. When I started my blog, Mighty Isis: the Adventures of a Social Entrepreneur, I had Mighty Isis, the cartoon heroine in mind.

I love the sound of “Mighty Isis.” The assonance of the long ‘i.’ To this day, it sounds like an incantation, a magic spell.

I remain deeply moved that Ashley was willing to share her prized comic book, the number one of The Mighty Isis series, with me. Her father had bought it for her because he knew of her love for Egypt.

How are you? I think you called up this afternoon but I wasn’t able to answer it because I have classes and I left my mobile phone in my bag.

My mother is OK but her BP is unstable. There are times that her blood pressure is high and there are times that her BP is normal so her Doctor won’t allow her to go home so that her BP would be monitored every now and then. She wanted to go home and rest there because she doesn’t like to stay in the hospital.   The doctor required her to have brain scan to know if her brain has blood clot.

We went to MU Hospital ( a private hospital ) this morning during my vacant time I don’t know yet the result because her Doctor in the hospital where she is confine wasn’t there yet. My mother is confine in a government hospital because it’s cheaper compared to a private hospital. But brain scan is expensive I paid almost Php. 5,000.00. Her medicines are expensive too for she has mild stroke. Her left body is paralyzed but we’re very optimistic that she will go back to normal.

I used my savings from my salary here in La Salle. But it’s OK I could still find a job and save money. The most important thing is the life of my mother. Benjie and Josephine are staying in the hospital. Last night I slept there and went home at 4:00 A.M. to get the food for Benjie and Josephine to lessen the expenses because it’s too expensive to buy food in the restaurant. Joven and her mother cook the food if I sleep in the hospital. But if I sleep in our house I cook the food and bring them to the hospital and goes to school.   Take care Cheryl because you just had your eye surgery..I love you and I miss you.. God Bless..   Love, Leah