History of Mali Nieta Foundation
While performing executive physicals for Methodist Hospital in 2005, I was introduced to Garba Konate who was studying at the University of Houston. He and I became friends and when he was preparing to return to Mali Africa, he told me that he wanted to develop a nonprofit organization to give back to his country. So was born Mali Nieta Foundation.
With the IRS approval in 2010, I began to collect excess hospital instruments and unused bandages and other goods that I stored in my father in laws garage. The personnel at the hospital heard about me and offered me 8 cartons of sterile surgical gloves. We filled ½ of a 20 foot container and shipped it to a hospital named “Mere et Infants” (for mothers and children) which had recently been built for the city of Bamako, Mali. The instruments have been used repeatedly over the years. The durable medical equipment including a C pap and oxygenator have transformed the services there.
Form 2012-2013 I shipped 3 containers filled with equipment to Lima Peru to improve on the services provided to the indigent. I worked with Garba to ship more equipment to Mali.
In 2017 I approached the UH College of Technology about constructing a portable electronic classroom. Dr Mequaint Moges thought that it was a wonderful idea and had 5 senior students assigned to me. Together we purchased a 20 foot shipping container and transformed it into a solar powered electronic classroom with 14 computers and an air conditioning unit. It was shipped to Mali and is use in Mopti, Mali.
In 2018, I met Donna Gunn and we started working together to improve a school that she and Ravi Reddy created in Tanzania for the Maasai children. Located about 2 ½ hours south of Arusha is a number of villages with about 10,000 people who are extremely poor and subsist on diet of meat, milk and maize. Their average lifespan is 42 years for men and 44 for women. There are a lot of teenage marriages, abuse of women, and illnesses. The people drink surface water which is highly polluted and that limits their productivity and lifespan. They are ill several times a month with gastrointestinal illnesses.
Sandy, my love and life partner, and I built a library for the school and installed 24 laptop computer with 150 learning programs, internet, 7000 books, furniture, and a large covered meeting area in the front porch of the library. The school is thriving now with 170 students, teachers, a farm manager, a garden, a greenhouse, and a deep bore well producing pure water.
There is a clinic in a nearby village named Emboreet which is run by Father Lawrence. Every year Mali Nieta Foundation sends him $1000 worth of medication and equipment to allow him to further serve the Maasai and surrounding population.
Mali Nieta Foundation has allowed me to serve my fellow “man”, save lives and improve the health of many people in several places in the world.