Through a chance meeting at the Abidjan Zoo during our 2019/2020 New Year’s tour to Côte d’Ivoire, we have forged a friendship and partnership with Liberian activist, philanthropist and politician MacDella Cooper. Affectionately called “Liberia’s Angel” by those who have picked up her cause, Ms. Cooper’s warm, light-hearted nature belies her fierce advocacy.

MacDella Cooper, Alicia Koné, and W.E.L. NGO founder Elodie Kouadio at the W.E.L. NGO Impact My Community event at the American Corner in Bouake’s Université Alassane Ouattara, January 2020.

Ms. Cooper’s own compelling story as a refugee during Liberia’s civil war in the early 90s – which landed her in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire and ultimately in New York where she attended university and built a career as a model and in corporate planning/consulting - underscores her tenacity and desire to aid her home country.

Having established the MacDella Cooper Foundation (a 501c3) in 2004, Ms. Cooper is motivated by the belief, “education is the saving grace of Liberia and Africa as a whole,” and “to promote education, we must first provide the basic needs — shelter, food, clothing and security.” Since its inception, the foundation has focused efforts on educating vulnerable children, engaging & empowering youth and investing in women and the girl child, with the overarching aim of releasing them from a cycle of poverty so they may become active contributors to their nation’s economic, social and political future.

In addition to these efforts, MacDella Cooper has now established the Movement for One Liberia party that focuses on empowering women in politics, economic growth and partnering for justice of rape victims in Liberia, West Africa.

According to MCF, access to basic services in Liberia remains well below pre-civil war levels for slightly more than a third of the population. And, remarkably, an even higher proportion of the country’s citizens survive on less than US $1 a day.

Together, Koné Consulting and the MacDella Cooper Foundation seek to create impactful projects that will bridge and leverage the strengths of our respective organizations and create a multi-national cultural exchange of like-minded advocates and volunteers with the goal to empower and train women and children in impoverished Liberian and Ivoirian (Ivory Coast) communities, and ultimately across sub-Saharan and West Africa.

We invite you to follow our progress by subscribing to our blog (see bottom of this page), visiting our Travel Côte d’Ivoire Partners’ page, and/or consider joining us on our expert-led upcoming 2021/2022 Service, Learning, Leadership cultural exchange tour – details coming soon.

Travel with Purpose

Koné Consulting
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS INSPIRING CHANGE
AND LASTING IMPROVEMENTS

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Partner spotlight: MacDella Cooper and the MacDella Cooper Foundation (MCF)