Happy New Year! 

I, Amadou Barry, AMISTAD America's webmaster want to recruit you to my lending team, Amistad Salone, on Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restauranteur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

I am not asking you for a donation! I am inviting you to become a micro-investor. You will not earn any financial profit on your micro-loan but contrary to all those "smart investors" who placed their funds in Bernard Madoff's hands, you will see the full return of your money and an enormous "feel good" profit! Check this - the delinquency rate of our Sierra Leone field partner is 0.02% and the default rate is 0%!

If you join my lending team Amistad  Salone, we can work together to alleviate poverty in Sierra Leone.  I strongly believe that it is a legacy of Schooner Amistad's visit to Sierra Leone.

There are several low-income entrepreneurs from Sierra Leone who will benefit greatly from our collective effort. Once you're a part of the team Amistad Salone, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva "count" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio, so our team's overall impact will grow!

Join the Amistad Salone lending team NOW!

Wojtek (Voytec) Wacowski aka Amadou Barry
AMISTAD America's Webmaster

Webmaster's comment: December 11th marked the first anniversary of Amistad's landing in Freetown, Sierra Leone - that visit touched each and everyone from Amistad's team who was privileged to visit Sierra Leone. We all became Friends of Salone (that's how Sierra Leoneans casually refer to their country). We follow reporting from there and simply are thinking how we can help our friends.

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

High maternal mortality levels in Sierra Leone contribute to its low human development rank (file photo)

 DAKAR, 18 December 2008 (IRIN) - For the second consecutive year Sierra Leone has come last in the UN Development Programme ranking of human development indicators of 179 countries.

Some analysts say Sierra Leone is nonetheless advancing in some areas and that the impact of the country’s 11-year civil war must be taken into account for a full measure of progress.

The UN Human Development Index measures development based on three principal dimensions: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. These are measured by life expectancy at birth; adult literacy, and combined gross enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education; and per capita income in terms of purchasing power.

Life expectancy in Sierra Leone is 42, or just over half of the life expectancy in the top 20 ranked countries. Just 25 percent of women are literate, with the level at just 37 percent for the entire population.

“Sierra Leone’s placing on the index should be a call to action for everyone who is interested in the well-being of ordinary people in Sierra Leone,” Engilbert Gudmundsson, World Bank Sierra Leone country director, told IRIN.

Read the full report published on IRIN website

A new website: The Voyages is a "must have bookmark" in a browser of anybody with interest in history of slavery.  The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. The Voyages website itself is the product of two years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America.he story of the slave trade and the Africans who became part of the largest forced migration in modern history.

The Voyages has an African Names database with details on more than 67,000 slaves who were captive on slave vessels during the 19th century.

None of those Africans made it to the Americas, though—the ships were captured by naval cruisers after Britain and the US outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1807.

For that reason, and because Africans were identified by given names only, it's unlikely that African-Americans will find their ancestor there. 

See Voyages' Understanding the Database section for in-depth guidance on using the site.

I highly reccomend to play  a video demo showing how to use the website

I just can't believe that it is already one full year since Schooner Amistad sailed into Freetown Harbor in Sierra Leone. 

Anniversaries are usually good excuses to relive some events and look at them from a changed perspective. A quick reminder for those who have not followed Amistad's 2007/2008 Atlantic Freedom Tour: on June 21st, 2007, Amistad set sail from her homeport in New Haven, followed closely by media - BBC,  and here. (more links)

William "Bill" Pinkney, Amistad's first captain and now her Master Emeritus, noted to a reporter from New Haven Register that the idea of such a voyage by a re-creation of the original La Amistad, arose during the tall ships parade in New York City during the 1976 Bicentennial. "The dream has come," Pinkney exulted during a news conference on the Thursday before the Amistad  set sail. "This is the third leg," he said. The first was building the new Amistad in Mystic in 1999; the second was taking it to ports around America over the past seven years. "This time," Pinkney said, "we're going to the world."

And AMISTAD America went to the world....  While the schooner and her crew was plowing the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the AAI staff was preparing the visits in Liverpool, Bristol, London, and Lisbon.

As the visit in Freetown was to be the longest, most important and logistically most challenging port stay during the whole Tour we have even established a temporary AAI office in Freetown.

Finally, after several adventures, Amistad made it to West Africa and on December 7th we had our "soft landing" in Freetown.

For some reason, Amistad's Atlantic Freedom Tour gained much more attention in the international media than in the US mainstream press. I am as baffled by that as I was a year ago...  It seems that there was not enough blood, sex, or scandal involved to get more publicity - maybe this is a hint how to lead PR efforts in the future... (This is the This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it private opinion - I will be obliged for readers' advice about how to bring more publicity to future Amistad voyages.)   

Amistad is now slowly recovering from her long journey, wintering at Mystic Seaport. New England in December is cold and the skies are gray. It is very interesting to read the articles and crew blogs posted a year ago and describing Amistad's visit in Africa. It brings me back to the tropical sun and amazing warmth of the people of Sierra Leone. Great memories to help survive another winter and stimulate hope for new exciting voyages of the Freedom Schooner Amistad in 2009.

Stay Tuned.  

I personally agree with the assessment published in a newsletter covering International Sail Training & Tall Ships Conference in Halifax.

400 DELEGATES FROM  28 COUNTRIES... CONFERENCE RATED NEAR ‘EXCELLENT’ 

Four hundred delegates from 28 countries around the world converged on Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the end of last week (14-15 November 2008) for the International Sail Training and Tall Ships Conference 2008. Organized by Sail Training International, in collaboration with the American Sail Training Association (the biggest of STI’s 25 member national organizations), the conference had an overall rating from delegates of close to ‘Excellent’. Sail training vessel operators from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and throughout both Europe and North America attended, along with representatives of host ports from Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. The conference comprised a mix of plenary sessions for all delegates and an á la carte menu of 16 workshops. These covered a range of topics from dealing with the current ‘economic tsunami’ and navigating the regulatory seas, to recruiting trainees, the development of a successful sail training program.

AMISTAD America was represented at the Conference by President and CEO Gregory Belanger, Trustee Howard Slotnick, Captain of the Freedom Schooner - John Beebe-Center, and by this author. We all had a very busy time trying to participate in as many seminars as possible as well as making new friends. That activity got us in a "good" place in a photo collage published in the Conference Newsletter - Amistad's CEO, Greg Belanger, and this author got caught between Bermuda 2009 Tall Ship Atlantic Challenge organizers - hint, hint: Amistad will be sailing there to join the fleet of vessels sailing from Europe to Charleston, SC via Bermuda.  

Learn more  - Read the full conference newsletter