Warren and Baako recently had the opportunity to meet Amusa Gbadamosi, a Ghanaian soccer legend. Amusa was a striker on the 1965 Africa Cup of Nations winning team, the most outstanding player on the 1968 Olympic Team, and a man who once scored on Pele in a match in 1969. His career spanned 24 years on teams in the African leagues from Ghana to Nigeria. Football wasn't lucrative for African players in the time he played, but the Retired Footballers Association in Ghana was supposed to care for him. It has failed to do so and he now lives in poverty in Bimbilla. His fate is connected to the plight of women victimized by witchcraft accusations, many of whom are banished when they become a burden on their families in old age. If Ghana can't provide for its biggest celebrities, its footballers, how can it be expected to provide for the average elderly Ghanaian? Elderly care is one of the systems that must be improved in order to put an end to witchcraft accusations in Ghana Some of you are familiar with my story of Amusa Gbadamosi, the legendary footballer from the 60s and a man known as the African Pele. You can read the previous post here.

Part I
I visited with Mr. Gbadamosi and had a question for him. Ghana and Uganda were playing a match and it was only 4 hours away. I asked Mr. Gbadamosi if he would attend the match with me.

He hesitated and put down his trusty transistor radio he always has on him. I was certain he was going to give me a reason why he simply couldn't go. He looked at me and said he had actually decided to try and attend the match but he wasn't sure how he would make it. We are talking about a man who doesn't even like watching the matches on television. Well he told me he would be happy to go with me.

I would be attending the match at a stadium that should be named for my guest.

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We are excited to announce that your support of Gurkha Welfare Trust has helped complete 400 homes! As they say on their website, "That’s 400 veterans or their widows who now have somewhere safe to live after last year’s devastating earthquakes reduced their old homes to rubble." In fact, we are now one-third of the way to rebuilding all of the 1,200 Gurkha homes that were destroyed and hope to have them all rebuilt by June 2017. Right now, the construction process has begun on 380 additional homes. You can read more about the specifics of Gurkha’s building process in our previous blog post.

As you may recall, on April 25, 2015, Nepal was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The earthquake caused an avalanche on Mt. Everest, creating mudslides, and destroying more than half a million homes. As the Nepalese were just beginning to recover, a second 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit on May 12. Response efforts were complicated and delayed due to further damage and because many response workers were injured or killed by the second quake.

In the past year, EcoViva has made great strides in advancing our goals of protecting critical mangrove habitat in El Salvador, raising people’s standard of living, and promoting community and civic participation. Mangrove forests provide a critical refuge for biodiversity and serve as nurseries for commercially important juvenile fish. Restoring degraded mangrove areas creates suitable habitat for fish spawning, protecting species, and ensuring a long-term source of income for the community through sustainable fishing. Using the proven method of Ecological Mangrove Restoration (EMR), we restored over 50 acres of mangrove forest, and our community partners continue to steward the forest by creating and enforcing resource management plans grounded in scientific research. By strengthening environmental policy and involving community members in those discussions, we are able to create lasting change that will protect the Bay of Jiquilisco.