Oic Founder Aids Schools In Africa Starts Drive For Supplies

On one of their trips to Africa, the Rev. Leon Sullivan and his wife Grace were amazed when they visited schools in rural Zambia and at one "found 75 children sitting on the floor, no desks, no chairs, no pens, no nothing."

"And there were another 75 children sitting outside waiting to take their turn," Sullivan said yesterday.

Sullivan said what he and his wife found in Zambia is also true in dozens of poor countries all over Africa: "Half the children have no school at all and the other half have no supplies."

Today at Progress Plaza in North Philadelphia, Sullivan is kicking off his latest program to assist Africa. It's the "SOS: Help the Children of Africa Campaign." (SOS is for Supporters of Sub-Saharan Africa).

Initially, the program is aimed at helping five African countries - Uganda, Rwanda, Benin, Ethiopia and Liberia.

Sullivan said he decided to launch the campaign after the Third African- American Summit held in May in Senegal, where African leaders asked for aid for African children.

"We have to help," Sullivan said. "As Jews help Israel, as Irish help Ireland and Poles help Poland, it's time for blacks to help our own in Africa."

Since last May, Sullivan has been writing to churches, fraternities and sororities, asking for donations of school supplies. At today's rally, the SOS program will display some of the "3 million books, 500 desks, 500 chairs and literally millions of pencils" collected from that letter-writing campaign, said Sullivan's daughter, Hope Sullivan Hurley, a lawyer.

In addition, 2,000 Philadelphia school children will march today from Bright Hope Baptist Church to Progress Plaza to underscore the plan to get school children in America involved with helping children in Africa.

"This is only the beginning," Sullivan pledged. "We will do this in 20 American cities by the last week of February, which is Black History Month."

Dr. Carolyn Holmes, director of the Office of African and African-American Studies at the Philadelphia School District, says Schools Superintendent David Hornbeck wants to make sure that Philadelphia schools participating in the campaign use the project as a learning tool.

Each school will select a country and the School District will provide materials for those schools to learn about the country.

Already the Bethune School has been involved for the past three years in a ''Pennies for Pencils" program that helps buy pencils, books and desks for a program in Uganda, Holmes said.

Sullivan has long been active with development in Africa. There are Opportunities Industrialization Centers, a program he founded, in 17 African countries, said Hurley.

And Sullivan's "Teachers for Africa," program has sent 300 out of a planned 1,000 teachers, for nine-month stints to teach on the continent.