SRU Athletes for Forgotten Angels Information

SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – The Slippery Rock University Athletes for Forgotten Angels service organization will travel to Kiserian, Kenya later this week for a 10-day trip to teach sports clinics and assist in service projects at Hekima Place, an orphanage for African girls.

The group will send seven Slippery Rock student-athletes, five women's soccer players and two softball players, along with SRU's head women's soccer coach Noreen Herlihy, who oversees the group. They will depart the Pittsburgh airport Thursday (Jan. 9) morning at 6:05 a.m. and will return Jan. 20.

This marks the fourth international trip for the group since 2008 and the first to Africa. The group has been to Haiti twice and St. Lucia once and has also taken a service trip to New Orleans to assist in the cleanup from Hurricane Katrina in 2009.

Joining Herlihy on the service trip will be Rock women's soccer players Dana O'Neill, Izabel Scott, Nicole Krueger, Brooke Edwards and Shannon Mahoney and softball players Kalli Wakefield and Emily Lobdell.

"We are delighted to have the opportunity to go over to Hekima Place and assist those that are already there to positively impact the lives of these young girls," said Herlihy. "These SRU student-athletes will no doubt be true ambassadors of our university. Being there as collegiate students and as athletes, we hope to encourage these young girls to live their dreams and know that anything in life can be possible with believing in yourself. It is my hope that our female student-athletes presence there will provide that bit of inspiration to show that they can be strong, educated women. It's going to be very exciting, and I want to thank everyone who provided their support for this project."

The group has collected donations at home Slippery Rock sporting events since the beginning of the academic year to help fund the trip and will be bringing sports equipment and gear along with them.

Along with teaching sports clinics and playing various sports with the girls at Hekima, Slippery Rock's student-athletes on the trip will also assist with gardening, food preparation, academics and various service projects around the orphanage.

Pending an available internet connection and time constraints, members of the group plan to provide journals of their experiences each day that will be posted to the Slippery Rock athletics website, www.RockAthletics.com, throughout the trip. When the group returns, a photo gallery will also be added. All journals from the trip, as well as journals from the group's previous trips, can be accessed via the Forgotten Angels page linked above.

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Kate Fletcher, who still lives at and operates the orphanage as its director, founded Hekima Place in 2005. Along with a safe place to live for the girls that attend, Hekima Place also provides education for all ages. Currently, there are 24 girls in secondary school, 36 in primary school and five in preschool.

Among the many missions of the organization, Hekima Place strives to provide a loving and safe environment for children whose parents have died from AIDS or whose families have been ravaged by the disease.

The governing board for Hekima Place includes a board of trustees in Kenya and a board of directors in the United States that is based just 45 miles south of Slippery Rock in Pittsburgh.