Inspire Entertainment Magazine Spring 2014 - Vol. 4 | Page 49

More Than A Pretty

Face

S

elita Ebanks is more than just a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model and a Victoria’s Secret Angel,
she is a woman who deeply cares about children who are living in extreme poverty in Africa. Inspire Entertainment Magazine celebrates the wonderful charity work Selita does with Shine on
Sierra Leone, a nonprofit organization that provides education, mentoring and nutritional support to schools in the west African nation. Selita launched a neo/postnatal health care program with SOSL
to help save mothers and their babies. Selita donated the $20,000 that she won on Season 3 of "The Celebrity Apprentice" to this new program. She also formed a charity organization, “Women’s Coalition for Empowerment and Opportunity”, which helps to support women’s educational and professional programs.
Selita shares her thoughts about her charity work in this interview.
Q: How did you become involved with Shine on Sierra Leone?
Ebanks: I kind of stumbled upon Shine on Sierra Leone. I went to Sierra Leone with ELLE Magazine and a company called Ruff & Cut just to learn more about non-conflict diamonds and how these non-conflict diamonds
companies … get that to the community in Sierra Leone. I didn’t know much about Sierra Leone in going down
other than it was a war-torn country. They had a new government, and I was meeting the president and vice president. I had my questions about diamonds.
Well, Tiffany Persons (the director of Shine on Sierra Leone) was down there, and she invited us all to go to one
of her schools called Muddy Lotus. So, we went, and that was pretty much the moment when I knew that I had to
work with Shine on Sierra Leone. What they do for those people, it’s quite amazing. When we got to the school,
there was a parade, and the school was in a very large village. There’s about 500 students at that school, and they
were just so happy, so overwhelmed, to have visitors. We walked through the village, and they danced, and there
was a presentation for us.
But, afterward, we got to tour the actual classrooms. There were buildings that didn’t have roofs or windows, or
proper desks, and things of that nature that I think every student should have. They were jammed into three
classrooms, and at that moment I knew I had to help Shine on Sierra Leone build another (continue-next page)