Press Release

A Bike Ride Across America to Save Lives

For Immediate Release: July 7, 2022
Contact: Nowu Lavala, contact@hopeisloud.org c: 301-523-2423
Ahamadu Sirleaf, contact@hopeisloud.org c: 763-227-1844
Website: www.hopeisloud.org

(Washington, DC) - Hope Is Loud Foundation, a Maryland-based health advocacy organization, is calling colleges, universities, cyclists, churches, cancer centers and concerned Americans everywhere to join hands with us in support of a two-week-long cycling event called the Ride Across America Awareness Campaign (RA3C).

Hope Is Loud’s first annual cross-country bike ride from Washington, DC to Seattle triples as a bone marrow drive, cycling event and informational campaign raising awareness about the scarcity of donors for Blacks, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) needing life-saving bone marrow cancer treatment. It is also organized to increase the number of Americans donating stem cells to patients waiting for bone marrow transplants.

Bone marrow transplantation is a curative therapy for leukemia and other blood related diseases. “This is not a Black problem, Asian Problem, Hispanic problem, or White problem. This is a life-and-death issue all of us can come together to solve with hearts filled with compassion and care,” said Ahamadu M. Sirleaf, founder and CEO of Hope Is Loud. “As a cancer survivor and avid cyclist who struggled to find a bone marrow match, I understand the fear and helplessness patients feel as they cling on to hope, not knowing one day to the next if they will survive. I also appreciate the will to live and the commitment to health surviving that condition inspires.”

Currently, there is a dire bone marrow shortage for African Americans and other BIPOC members in the national and international bone marrow registries. For African Americans, there is only a 29% chance of finding a donor. For Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders that number is 47%. At 79 %, Whites have the greatest chance of finding donors.

Hope Is Loud aims to increase the number of BIPOC donors between the ages of 18-40 in the registry to 1,000 in 2022. Another priority for the organization this year is to appeal to lawmakers in Congress to amend the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to include bone marrow donation as a covered care.

Hope Is Loud will officially kick off the bike ride on July 29, 2022. In collaboration with cycling clubs, churches and cancer centers, participants will conduct bone marrow drives in small towns and big cities as they make their way across America.

“We are asking for the support of local news organizations, charities, neighbors, friends and families of cancer survivors to highlight and participate in this effort as we bring hope to thousands of patients praying for a lifeline,” said Sirleaf. “Your support is essential to this movement.”

About Hope Is Loud

The Hope Is Loud Foundation is a global health equity movement. Our work begins with an awareness campaign about the urgent need for BIPOC stem cell donors in an effort to increase patients’ access to life-saving bone marrow transplantation therapy. Founded in 2021, the organization’s activities are structured to educate and inspire people to give the gift of life to others confronted with cancer and other deadly diseases.

About Ahamadu M. Sirleaf

Ahamadu M. Sirleaf is a leukemia survivor who is fortunate to be alive today because his doctors were able to secure a rare stem cell match that allowed him to undergo a bone marrow transplant.

After an extensive search, his care team found zero matches in the U.S. national registry and only two matches in the international registry (one in Brazil and one in Italy). The Italian match never showed up for his appointments, and according to his oncologist, due to an issue between the US and Brazilian governments, donor exchanges between the two countries were prohibited at the time (2014).

Finding a match that would work for Sirleaf required sending test kits to his country of origin (Liberia) to collect samples from his siblings. Luckily, Sirleaf’s younger brother was a “tissue half-match,” a high risk but usable fit.

Grateful and motivated to help others, Sirleaf now commits his time and passion to addressing the disparity of matchable BIPOC bone marrow samples that exist in our national registry.

In April 2021, Sirleaf and a few friends rode their bikes 800 miles from Norfolk, VA to Savannah, GA, to raise awareness about the urgent need for BIPOC bone marrow donors. During that journey, they spoke to many Americans from different backgrounds and walks of life about the problem. Along the way, what he learned was eye-opening: over 80% of Black people they met had no knowledge of the bone marrow registry or of the bone marrow transplantation process. Of the Whites they spoke with, all of them knew about the registry and over half of them were already donors. Although this discovery was informal and anecdotal, it sheds light on at least one reason the registry has only 8% of Black donors.

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