Meeting the 2nd Lady of Liberia

I woke up today feeling refreshed after my unexpected day off and trip to the beach. After a busy morning in the office, I walked across town to the headquarters of the Group of 77, a government-sponsored program for handicapped Liberians. The head of the Group of 77 with whom I met is actually the Second Lady of Liberia, i.e. the Vice President’s wife, i.e. the Lynne Cheney of Liberia. While it was an honor to meet her, I realized about 20 minutes into the meeting that there was no possibility for developing a partnership between our organizations for a very simple reason: the “Enabled” program that YAI is developing specifically targets people who were handicapped because of the war, while the Group of 77 only works with people who are handicapped due to disease (polio etc) or accident. Thankfully, the Second Lady completely understood that we were restricted by the project proposal and the desire of our funders, and graciously passed on the information about other government-sponsored programs for people handicapped because of the conflict. I was a little embarrassed by this obvious miscommunication, but comforted to know that there were people out there who actually wanted to help Liberians in need, even if it wouldn’t benefit them or their organization.