On September 25, 2021 Africa Fire Mission during our Annual Fundraiser, the Chama, Africa Fire Mission was pleased to honor Shandy Seastone and Ed Collet.

Africa Fire Mission thrives on volunteers. Volunteers are at the heart of our organization. We have dozens and dozens of volunteers. We have volunteers from all across the United States, Africa and Europe that help to make AFM run on a daily basis. These men, women, firefighters, civilians and children are all a vital part of Africa Fire Mission being able to achieve its goals and objectives.

Shandy Seastone – Volunteer of the Year

Shandy has been helping to prepare AFM’s team for travel for 3 years. She convinced her husband Jon to come to Africa in 2017 while he was gone, started recruiting other firefighters in the Denver, CO area. Shandy helps to connect interested team members to AFM, assists with orientation and overall communication to the team.

Thank you Shandy for all that you have done and all that you will do for Africa Fire Mission and those that we serve around the world.

When Africa Fire Mission travels with a team to provide training in Africa or other parts of the world, our team members volunteer their time, talents and treasures to provide world class training to our partners. Our instructors, undergo training in advance of the trip to prepare of the mission and prepare the lessons that they will teach in our week long fire training events. We have been fortunate to have many instructors return year after year and continue to build each year on the training that they have been providing as well as to build strong relationships with firefighers and our overseas partners.

Ed Collet, Trainer of the Year

After traveling to Kenya with AFM in 2019 to train firefighters in water supply, Ed was disappointed that we couldn’t go to Kenya in 2020. He was watching his wife, Jill, a school administrator, transition students and teachers to virtual classrooms and called Nancy to say - hey we need to do a virtual academy. That idea lead to 20 instructors providing classes to over 600 students from 19 countries - online! Ed is headed back to Kenya with AFM in November 2021 and has made plans to help advance what he started 2 years ago. Ed said: “We don’t accomplish any of this alone. We always have people helping us. That’s ultimately our whole goal at AFM. We support the firefighters in Africa so they can do this on their own, and we are there as their support.”