A coup d’etat halfway around the world has left an Emporia State University student stranded, frantic over her family’s safety and suddenly without money for basic needs or for ongoing education expenses.
Awalyne Kone, 23, felt she had nowhere to turn when on Sept. 17 military forces staged a coup in her homeland, Burkina Faso, a French-speaking nation in eastern Africa, bordered by Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast). Killings and fiery protests reportedly went on for a week.
Kone has not been able to contact her family since the coup, when financial support from home ended abruptly.
Emergency assistance has come from the ESU Student Foundation, organized four years ago by Emporia State students, and from the local Salvation Army, which paid her rent for October and November, provided food temporarily, and helped Kone get in touch with people she knew in Burkina Faso who might be able to help find her family.
“They said my house is empty,” Kone wrote late last fall in her application for help from the Student Foundation. “We also contacted our embassy here but they could not do anything for me. If I were to go back home, who will I go to?
“I am overwhelmed, lost, tired. I don’t know what to do and who to turn to.”
When she turned in the application, Kone owed $8,160 for the fall semester, and would owe thousands more to finish her degree in May.
Through the Student Foundation’s Hornet Opportunity Award Fund, the group paid enough on the overdue tuition and fees to allow Kone to work out a payment plan and to enroll in classes for the spring semester.
“When I told her that she would be receiving the award, she just started crying,” said Tina Miller, assistant director for annual giving for the Emporia State Foundation and advisor to the Student Foundation.
Kone’s extreme situation is an example of the type of dire emergency need the Student Foundation wants its Hornet Opportunity Award Fund to meet. The funds are for fellow students who have exhausted all other forms of financial aid and assistance and who are at-risk of not completing their education at Emporia State.
“They are a group of students dedicated to helping other students, and as they like to say, they are ‘#Hornets4Hornets,’” Miller said of the students involved in the ESU Student Foundation.
Now, the Student Foundation is reaching out for help of its own. If the students can raise $20,000 by the end of this spring 2016 semester, the organization will receive a match of $20,000 from a challenged issued by an anonymous donor.
The donor pledged to match up to $20,000 in gifts to each of five campus organizations, for a maximum match of $100,000 and a potential combined total of $200,000. The scholarships will honor alumnus Gary Sherrer, long-time supporter of Emporia State and a former member of the Kansas Board of Regents as well as the ESU Foundation of which the Student Foundation is a part.
Meeting the challenge would give the Student Foundation group “some traction under their feet,” Miller said. “The challenge gift means all of a sudden they’re going to have enough funds. If they can raise $20,000 this spring, that means they’re going to have $40,000 to make a difference with.”
Funds raised in the fall semester came primarily from other students.
“Some of these students were giving $20, and that’s huge,” Miller said. “Some of these students were eating ramen noodles last week.”
With less than four full months remaining, the group needs to raise $15,000 more.
“They’re realizing they’re going to have to contact the community to do that,” Miller said.
In fact, their first community-based fundraiser — selling barbecue ribs for Super Bowl Sunday — was a rousing success. Their full order of 250 slabs of ribs, which were smoked for pickup at Waters True Value, sold out, raising $6,000 toward their goal.
Student Foundation members also are planning a Spring Hornet Nation Campaign in April, with shirts, bracelets and other items given to donors who contribute $20 or more. Students also will work with businesses in the community to help raise awareness of the recently organized foundation, Miller said.
As for Kone, after being helped by the Student Foundation, she has joined the organization and is helping with the fundraisers. She said she appreciated what had been done for her and that she wanted to help change lives, too, as her father had done with his charity in Burkina Faso.
“She is so sincere and has gone through heartache that many of us will never have to face,” Miller said. “Within the same week we made the award, she was in our offices, helping to stuff over a hundred finals week survival packs to hand out to students on campus.”
Meanwhile, Kone’s own life and finances remain in flux.
“She’s doing everything she possibly can,” Miller said. “Being an international student, her jobs are very limited. If she were a citizen, she’d be working more, I guarantee that.”
The student visa prohibits Kone working in the community, but she has found a job as a graduate assistant in the university’s School of Business. She is limited to 20 hours of work per week, and her earnings fall about $400 short of expenses each month.
“I am facing the risk to be out of (visa) status and illegal in the U.S. if I don’t get my tuition paid,” Kone said.
She plans to complete course work in May for a master’s degree in business administration. She cannot receive the degree, however, until she pays the debt in full.
The situation in Burkina Faso remains in sporadic turmoil, despite an election that brought a new president weeks after the coup. An Al Qaeda attack at a luxury hotel in Burkina Faso on Jan. 16 left 29 people dead, including an American missionary and two Amnesty International workers.
“Even though it is better today, I still have no sign of my family,” Kone said. “I don’t know how they are.”
The coup turned her secure life and her future upside-down in a matter of hours.
As a child, she and her family — her father, who worked for the Burkina government; her mother; and three younger brothers and a sister — had led a comfortable life. The family had come to the United States on vacation when Awalyne Kone was 10.About a year after visiting America, , when Awalyne was 11, her mother died.
Life changed at home, but she continued her education and went to Morocco to earn her bachelor’s degree. She came to Atlanta for courses to polish her English skills before arriving at Emporia State.
She found the university and the community to be a welcome home away from home, a contrast from Atlanta, New York City, and other big cities she has visited.
“The moment I arrived here in Emporia, I was surprised,” Kone said. “I am not talking about how small the city is, but how big the people’s hearts are. Everyone I met, everyone I talked to has been nice to me. ... I only wish more people knew about this town, because it is wonderful.”
She dreams of finding a job in the U.S., and bringing over little brother, Kevin, to live with her.
“I used to tell him, ‘Kevin, when I will be done with school, I will bring you back to the U.S. and I will take care of you as mom would have,’” Kone said. “Today, this might never happen, not just because of the money, but because I don’t even know if Kevin is still alive.”
For more:
People interested in making a gift to the ESU Student Foundation may call Tina Miller at 620-341-6433 or email her at annualfund@emporia.edu.
Donations also may be made online by going to https://hornetnation.emporia.edu/givenow, where you can pull down on the box called “Designation.” Student Foundation is one of the choices.