Bringing success home

Minnesota Vikings starting free safety Madieu Williams hasn’t forgotten where he came from.

The 28-year-old university alumnus, who is playing in his sixth season in the NFL this year, returned to Prince George’s County yesterday to announce the creation of a new university center focused on global health issues. The Center for Global Health Initiatives will focus on addressing health problems in his two homes: Prince George’s County and Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Williams, who was born in Sierra Leone, donated $2 million to the university’s public health school to get the center going — the second major contribution in the college’s history.

“Health, literacy, nutrition and education — problems in these areas — are serious problems in Sierra Leone and right here under our noses,” Williams said during the press conference. “We need to step up and do something.”

School of Public Health Dean Robert Gold said he and Williams had been in communication with each other for more than a year, discussing how Williams could help the community that helped him for so many years. At first, Williams intended to create a scholarship fund but then began thinking on a more global level, Gold said.

“Talking to advisers and to people at the School of Public Health, I realized my broader vision of wanting to touch on so many different issues and make a big difference,” Williams said. “In order to reach more people and solve more issues, it needed to be a global initiative.”

Gold said Williams attended a day-long meeting with experts, advisers and legislators from around the country who are involved in global health issues Tuesday to discuss the specific focuses of the center.

Students in the School of Public Health will be invited and encouraged to volunteer at community health organizations — like schools or HIV/AIDS clinics.

“It’s our hope to get students involved in whatever programs we set up,” Gold said.

In January, Gold and Williams will travel to Sierra Leone for up to 10 days to explore various areas of interest and gain insight into the problems facing the region, Gold said.
Issues such as illiteracy, infant mortality and HIV/AIDS are prevalent in both Prince George’s County and Sierra Leone, Gold said. But the center will also focus on more location-centric issues, such as malaria in Sierra Leone.

“Sierra Leone has a very high infant mortality rate — the third highest in the world  — and Prince George’s County has one of the highest in the state,” he said. “But HIV/AIDS and literacy are also a problem in both. We’re not going to just look at problems that both areas share though.”

The center is not Williams’s first philanthropic contribution to places of his past.
In March, construction was completed on a four-classroom school in Freetown that Williams funded. In April, Williams teamed up with the public health school to hold a free football clinic and health screening for 200 kids and their parents. In June, Williams supplied his old high school — Duval High School in Lanham — with new Under Armour cleats for every player on the varsity football team, according to The Madieu Williams Foundation’s website

“I am very blessed to be in this position to look beyond the playing field and make a difference,” Williams said. “And honestly you can’t put a price on making a real difference.”

botelho at umdbk.com