June 24, 2014 report: The work continues.

We have received many reports as those who have escaped via the Railroad are beginning to make their way to other countries – mostly in Europe. We hope to have more detailed reports, and perhaps even some interviews, to share soon.

But we’ve had a rough week. In two different incidents in two different locations, we’ve had 58 LGBT people evicted from their “safe” houses and running for their lives. This follows on the heels of suicides by two people who lost hope of getting out, and also with the names of LGBT folks who are being hunted read out over the radio.

Due to some extraordinary acts of heroism on the part of several of our conductors, the 58 are now in two separate locations (32 and 26 people respectively) and temporarily out of harm’s way.

Except they are hungry! Money for food is scarce and when we spend money on food there is less money to bring them out of Uganda. We don’t want to have to spend money on food – we want them out of harm’s way! But sometimes we must give money for food while we raise money for transporting folks because the people in hiding are starving.

It costs us only $55 to get each person out. Then there are services – food, medical, housing, counseling, legal, and visa – available to them once we get them out of Uganda.

The total cost is $3,190. Or, put another way – we’d have them escape in two groups as they are in two different locations – $1,760 for the 32, and $1,430. We pledge (assuming our escape routes continue to function, and thus far we have a 100% success rate), to have each group out within 48 hours.

Please donate! Please tell others and share our website http://friendsnewundergroundrailtoad.org. The more people know about this and donate, the more people we can assist to safety.

Please do what you can…and a little bit more.