Small City With A Big Heart

It was announced that New Haven is sending four ambulances and $16,000 in medical supplies to its Ebola-torn sister city in Sierre Leone, after a three-month community campaign exceeded its fundraising goal.   “We are a small city with a big heart. I couldn’t be more proud of this community,” declared Mayor Toni N. Harp, who hosted the campaign’s kick-off in November 2014.

Also present was H.E. Bockari K. Stevens, the African nation’s U.S. ambassador, who attended to personally thank the people of New Haven.   “New Haven’s ambulances will help to change the game in Sierre Leone, which continues to be devastated by Ebola.  When the virus broke out, the country of seven million people had a total of five ambulances.”

New Haven set out to raise $100,000 to help its sister city of Freetown cope with the outbreak of the deadly virus.  It ended up collecting $114,000 in donations plus $25,000 of emergency supplies from Yale-New Haven Hospital.  Much of the money came from public-school teachers, administrators and students; sororities and fraternities and local not-for-profits; churches; and Yale-New Haven’s medical staff, which put in $25,000, according to Althea Norcott, who heads New Haven’s Freetown sister city committee.

Al Marder, who at 93 continues to work as an activist in town, called the ambulances  “a return favor of sorts”  Marder traced New Haven’s relationship to Freetown back 174 years, when Singe Pieh and the other Amistad captives (originally from Freetown) arrived here after a successful mutiny aboard their slave trip.  They eventually won their freedom in a landmark case that, Marder claims, helped launch the United State’s abolitionist movement.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro stated  “Freetown’s resilience in the face of such adversity is ‘awe inspiring’.   We want the people of Freetown to know that their brothers and sisters in New Haven, Connecticut, care about their plight and want to help them however that we can.”