Yehri Wi Cry, Inc

In the fall of 2010, an idea to make a difference in the lives of women was born. Childhood friends Marie Mansaray, Nadia Sasso, and Zainab Fadlu Deen were engaging in a conversation on how they could give back to a country, that they felt so close to, but yet still distant. A country located on the outskirts of West Africa made of 27,700 square miles of land filled with beautiful beaches and its natural mineral resource of diamonds. Unfortunately, this same land of beauty has been described by the CIA World Fact Book as one of the poorest, most poverty-stricken countries in the world. This land is known as Sierra Leone and it has been struggling to overcome adversity due to a tragic eleven-year civil war over politics and diamonds. Sierra Leone is plagued by much more than merely diamond wars but a marked socioeconomic rift that divides the poor from the affluent. The middle class is effectively non-existent, which provides the wealthy with much-needed medical access – while the poor are shut out. Class is a major issue within Sierra Leone and this fact is apparent in the drastically high maternal and infant mortality rates that exist today. Women of the lower class tend to lack the health care resources necessary to carry on a full term pregnancy into a successful delivery. With this in mind all three young ladies, although second generation immigrants to the US, making them American by birthright but Sierra Leoneans by blood, knew that they could collectively bring change to Sierra Leone. Hence, they decided on empowering women through the provision of birthing kits and incentive packages.