Your Copy of the 2015/2016 Annual Report is Here

Your Copy of the 2015/2016 Annual Report is Here

by | Feb 4, 2018 | annual report, education, Liberia, Scholarships, Thank You, Uniting Distant Stars, vocational training, youth development, Youth Empowerment

As an all-volunteer organization, we are grateful for all those who contributed to our final 2015/2016 Annual Report. This report will give you an:
  • Overview of our project during this two-year period; 
  • Inspirational testimonials from four of our students;
  • Summary of the financial report showcasing how your support made a difference;
  • And much more.
Please enjoy reading what YOU, our valued Star Supporter, accomplished for the youth of Liberia. Thank you for your generous support!

2015-2016 Annual Report

My Thank You Letter

by | Jul 10, 2016 | Uncategorized

In response to a recent donation I made to UDS, I received an email with a scanned image of a letter written to me from one of the recipients of my donation: Jeremy S. Poguah.

Here’s what Jeremy wrote to me: “Hi Miss Anna Bertch, I greet you with God love. I write to express my thanks to you for the computer lab you people open for us. I praise God so much for you and your family. I hope to see you one day in our country Liberia. We also express many thanks to the Uniting Distant Stars for helping us with our learning. May the Lord bless you.”

This sweet letter has become a treasure to me, and a printed copy now hangs framed on my wall. As part of our 6th Annual School Supply Drive, you too will receive this joy from one of our students when you make a donation of:

  1. $100 or more, you will receive a letter from one student.
  2. $500 or more, you will receive three letters from three different students.

The students will receive their school supplies in September and the letters will be emailed to you during the months of September and October.

Your generosity has led to immense changes in the lives of these youth, and they would love to express their gratitude to you!

When both recipient and donor are lifted alike, it becomes apparent that the contributions of time, money, and prayers is worthwhile. I would like to express my own personal gratitude for these kids and for the important work Uniting Distant Stars is doing.


Many Blessings,

Anna Bertch, Uniting Distant Stars National Youth Leader
Liberia: Delivering School Supplies to Rogma International

Liberia: Delivering School Supplies to Rogma International

by | Dec 20, 2015 | Uncategorized

Uniting Distant Stars supporters and volunteers continued to give children and youth in Liberia a reason to be happy with our 2015 school supply campaign. On September 13, Rogma International School in Paynesville, a suburb of Monrovia, held their back-to-school program. This was the second of series of three programs that started with City of Joy School on September 6 and ended with Russ Wood Christian Academy on October 11.

Rogma’s location required UDS to transport our team in three vehicles, because it was too far to walk and it was raining heavily. Our Liberian Co-Founder and Country Director, Kelvin Fomba, enlisted two volunteers to carry 24 UDS team members and 6 invited guests to the program.

Rogma International Staff and UDS Leaders.
Kelvin and Daniel Lloyd, UDS volunteer, delivered a huge surprise to our staff and youth group by having shirts made for the group that they paid for. UDS was making their debut in Paynesville and wanted to make our presence known as an organization serving children and youth in Liberia. The photos below show our team proudly wearing their beautiful shirts.

UDS volunteers and youth group standing outside Rogma’s school
UDS Youth Group displaying the back of their shirts.
Another highlight came from Rogma’s community when they organized a cookout, which UDS contributed $40 towards food. Each child received a bowl of Jellof (aka Jollof) Rice, a popular dish in Liberia and other West African nations. This recipe will be included in our Recipes for Learning Cookbook currently in development by our dedicated project team.

Rogma Students eating their Jellof Rice. Each student was served a bowl by volunteers.

Kelvin standing in the middle talking with children as they eat their Jellof Rice.
After eating their delicious meal, it was time to distribute supplies. Students were called up individually to receive their packet of school items. Kelvin and Moses Lahai, UDS volunteer, handed out gift packages to Rogma’s aspiring students from our Star Supporters generous donations. As shown in the four photos below, this day uplifted the hopes of children attending Rogma International School.

The program provided entertainment form children and youth. Our youth group created a play called “The Greedy Man” and it was performed by three of its members. The performance is filmed in three short video clips with our youth speaking Liberian English, which a brief summary is provided for each scene.

Scene 1: A teenage boy invites an older man to share his food. However, this older man, who happens to bring his own spoon, eats all the food without any concern for the boy. This clip features the man drinking from a mineral water from a bag. This is the plastic we use for our Backpacks for Peace project.

Scene 2:The boy’s sister, who prepared his food, instructs him to not let this greedy man eat all his food again.

Scene 3:When the teenager sees the greedy man approaching him, he quickly takes appropriate action to prevent him from eating his food.

The moral of this story was to teach young people how to share and be good to each other. This was UDS Youth Group first performance and it had Rogma’s children laughing throughout. Our youth decided to use performing arts to address social concerns facing youth in Liberia.

The program ended with UDS giving Rogma some reading textbooks, kick balls and other supplies. The reading textbooks were donated in 2012 from a supporter, who is a teacher at St.Vincent de Paul School in Minnesota. We shipped nine boxes with our annual supply drives in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Our original plan was to send all the books in one shipment, but paying $75 per box prevented us from fulfilling this goal. We definitely need help shipping the 19 remaining boxes to get these books in Liberian children’s hands. Please read our Learning Center post to learn how to help.

Kelvin sharing to Rogma’s community about the other supplies being donated to their school.

Our wonderful supporters made this program a huge success. Both parents and school staff were praising our generous donors for supporting their children’s educational needs. Please view additional photos in our Facebook album.

Rogma Students holding their gift packages of school supplies.

Uniting Distant Stars Teams in Liberia and the U.S. offer our heartfelt Thanks and Appreciation for helping the children and youth we serve!

Photos and videos taken by Rodney John, UDS Volunteer

Liberian Youth Virtually Connect With Peers in Minnesota

by | Mar 9, 2014 | Uncategorized

March 7 was a very exciting day for our small and humble organization. We had been invited by youthrive, a Minnesota-based organization, on January 17, to have Liberian students participate in the Nobel Peace Prize Forum Youth Festival (NPPF) at Augsburg College via Google+ Hangout Connected Classrooms. We extended this opportunity to iLab Liberia since they had high-speed internet and the ideal space to hold this event. The featured speaker for the NPPF’s morning session was Liberia’s 2011 Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee, who has presented several times to Minnesotan youth.

Liberian youth at iLab in Sinkor, Liberia, watching Nobel Laureate share her story at Augsburg College in Minnesota via Google Hangout. (Photo by Rodney Johnson)
Uniting Distant Stars (UDS) and iLab Liberia co-hosted this event, and each organization invited youth to participate. We had nearly 50 students from various elementary and high schools, and University of Liberia. The program lasted about two hours and started at 9:30AM (CST) in Minnesota; 3:30PM (GMT) in Liberia.

Luther Jeke of iLab Liberia talking with the youth. (Photo by Rodney Johnson)
This was NPPF’s first year of using Google+ Hangout, so two tests were conducted earlier in the week that was coordinated by Edwin Irwin from youthrive and Mark Holterhaus from the NPPF team. The first test was on Tuesday and it took a few minutes before we could connect Liberia on hangout. From this test, Teemu Ropponen, iLab’s Executive Director, assessed what was needed to ensure the best connection. He and his team hooked up one computer to a projector for the students to view the activities in Minnesota and connected a video camera so the Liberian youth could be seen on the screen at Augsburg. Their efforts showed perfect results during the second test on Wednesday.

Liberia’s students waving to the camera. Youthrive’s Ed Irwin orchestrated the activities from Minnesota and cued Liberia when they would up on the screen at Augsburg. (Screen shot by Heather)
UDS Executive Director, Kelvin Fomba, quickly prepared our youth on what this event was about, because this was new territory for them. He explained that they would be participating live at this event through the internet. Most did not comprehend what he was saying, because they thought they would be just watching a video. Well once they were sitting in iLab’s conference room, they soon discovered that their presence was being acknowledged by the MCs at the forum in Minnesota. So, this was a very exciting and life changing experience for all youth.

Students watching Leymah present at Augsburg College in Minnesota. Left photo has Teemu Ropponen, iLab’s Executive Director, in the background by the wall. (Photos by Rodney Johnson)
Left shows some students taken photos with their cell phones (Photo by Rodney Johnson). Right photo shows students on the live Google feed (Screen shot by Heather).
Heather Cannon-Winkelman, UDS Executive Director, was connected privately via Hangout at Dakota County Technical College. She was co-presenting at this college later that morning for the Multicultural Student Leadership Association (MSLA) with a Liberian Student and MSLA President, Branko Saah Tambah, on Liberia and U.S. relations. She was able to see and hear the activities from both the Minnesota and Liberia sides. She took some the screen shots from her computer that are shared in this post. Interestingly, when the Russ Wood students saw her image appear on the screen, they started saying “there’s Heather.” So this made it more real for them.

Left of student watching Leymah (Photo by Rodney Johnson) and right photo of group from Heather’s perspective from her screen shot.
One of the highlights of Friday’s forum was when Leymah asked to have the lights turned off at Augsburg’s Kennedy Center. She then requested that the youth use their cell phones to light up the room. Liberia followed Leymah’s lead by turning off the lights and displaying their cell phones. Next Leymah proceeded to explain that though this room was dark, it was the young people like them that were the light. This definitely was an inspiring moment for the youth on both sides of the Atlantic.

Left are students in Liberia seeing the Kennedy Center illuminated by Minnesota peers’ cell phones (photo by Rodney Johnson). Right shows the Liberian students holding their cell phones (screen
shot by Heather).
Once Leymah was done with her talk, the floor was opened to questions and answers. About three to four students in Minnesota were able to ask her a question. Then Liberia was given their chance to ask the last one. It was one of our scholarship students from Russ Wood, Ishmael, that represented his peers by asking her a question. His asked Leymah how could Liberian youth become peace builders. This was a great opportunity for this rising star. Ishmael, who is about 12 years old, is a creative talent who writes his own parables and songs, MC’d last month’s second annual student celebration, and recited one of his parables to the participants–ranging from 16 to early 30’s–at our September 2013 workshop on creative and innovative workshop.

Left photo is Ishmael in front of the camera waiting for his cue (photo by Rodney Johnson). Photo is Ismael asking his question to Leymah (screen shot by Heather).
After Leymah answered Ishmael’s question, she mentioned that she knows the name of his school and would visit them when she was in Liberia next. Both Uniting Distant Stars and Russ Wood Students will gladly welcome her visit.

Leymah Gbowee addressing the Minnesotan students at Augsburg’s Kennedy Center and Liberian students via Google Connected Classrooms. (Screen shot by Heather).
Since iLab provided the space, UDS brought the refreshments. Some of our youth prepared the sandwiches and ensured everyone was served. This team of youth was led by another of our scholarship students, Princess, who will be graduating this year. Her team made enough sandwiches that allowed the youth to have seconds. When the program ended, our youth helped clean-up before they left iLab’s facilities. We encourage our youth to volunteer their time and talent for such events.

Left photo is the food table. Center photo is Princess enjoying what she helped prepare. Right photo shows youth in line to get a bottle of ice cold soft drink. (Photos by Rodney Johnson).
The virtual event was a great success. Kelvin was overwhelmed by number of students who expressed their gratitude for being able to participate in such a program. If you think about, these Liberian boys, girls, young men and women were able to connect to the greater world for about two hours. This experience is something they will not forget and hopefully they can do more of in the future.

Kelvin in the background with some of our youth. (Photo by Rodney Johnson)
UDS is equally grateful for this opportunity that connected Minnesota based and Liberia based organizations together. We have many Thanks for Maddy Wegner and Edwin Irwin at youthrive for inviting us to be part of it, and also for Teemu Ropponen and Luther Jeke at iLab Liberia along with rest of their team for proving their space and expertise. This amazing accomplishment can be summed up by a quote from Mattie Stepanek… “Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.