SAFIRI is a community-based program that takes females from 6 – 18 years of age and reconnects them to their African culture, provides spiritual enrichment, teaches life skills and more. Our key phrase is "Females Setting Out on a Journey through Life."

SAFIRI is designed as a joint female adult/youth bonding experience. Each initiate partners with an adult female (usually mothers, but could be family members, family friends, or volunteers).

They go through the program together up through the age of womanhood (age 18 or graduation from high school).

Our coordinators are Linda D.L. Green, Chrisandra Harville-Allen, and myself.

The grant we received from the REEC has enabled SAFIRI to do two things:

1) Take a trip on November 9-14 to St. Helena Island, South Carolina, to the 23rd Annual Penn Center Heritage Days Celebration. Penn Center is the site of one of the first schools for freed African slaves. The trip is intended to be an immersion experience into Gullah culture.

Gullah/Geechee culture, developed by the enslaved Africans, is a blending of the language and traditions of West Africa with the American experience. Many freed slaves settled in the sea islands of South Carolina, where they preserved many of their native traditions.

2) In June, 2006 SAFIRI will present its first college scholarship to the next graduate of the program, who is enrolled in college for Fall 2006.

The accompanying photos are of a ritual of womanhood we call the Uzima Rite. "Uzima" is a Kiswahili word for "adulthood." This sunrise ritual marks the occasion of the initiates coming into their womanhood. It is a culmination of a three-week ritual preparing the young women to cross over into the Community of Woman. It is done at the end of June for SAFIRI initiates who have graduated from high school or have become age 18.

The ultimate vision of the program is that these "new women" of SAFIRI will return to continue as mentors and facilitators to the younger initiates.

We are grateful to the REEC and the Ohio Conference for making possible this opportunity to guide the lives of young females as they develop a personal relationship with God and become strong women of African descent. Your support is crucial to our mission and we are eternally grateful.

We encourage other UCC churches interested in starting a rites of passage program for girls of African descent to contact us. We can provide consultation and training on how to set up a SAFIRI Rites of Passage program. For more information, please call Mt. Zion Congregational Church, UCC at 216.791.5760.

For more information about Racial Ethnic Empowerment grants, contact Kim Martin Sadler, 216.736.3756 or ksadler@thepilgrimpress.com.