Comment by aftbit
8 hours ago
I love this hyper-individualized approach. I would be way more willing to meet someone and sponsor _them_ than I would be to just give anonymous dollars.
8 hours ago
I love this hyper-individualized approach. I would be way more willing to meet someone and sponsor _them_ than I would be to just give anonymous dollars.
It's a great idea, and the OP and donors are making a big difference. While I was a doctorate student, I supported a Romanian orphanage (run by Americans I never met except via email) with parcels of medicine and stationary (basic stuff e.g. anti-fever pills, coloring pens etc.). Since I never sent any cash, I was not worried about being scammed.
I've also been financially supporting three grassroots projects to help children in three places, namely Lomé, Togo, Caruaru, Brazil and Bhopal, India (via https://www.fkb-bza.de, sorry, Website in German only, a charity that has the advantage of being free of any overhead - thanks to people I personally know and trust that travel there regularly, paying for their own tickets).
Thought experiment (putting back the geek hat on): I wonder if the OP's activity could be made viral and scaled up across the continent:
While there are more donors do:
- for each African country
- pick a seed city c
- pick a seed student s from c
- assign donor d to s to fund s' education
When paying for s.o. education, receiving students pledge to pay it forward by becoming a donor once they get a job that permits to do so or to return to become a teacher for a while.
On top of that, students form or join an online community to support each other and get to know each other (peace is as important as education!).
I could arange this. Meeting in person is tough. It takes me about 40 hours door to door to get to the village from my house (plane ride, taxi to a bus station, 12 hour bus ride through the country, another taxi, then motorcycle for the last leg). However, if you wanted to support a specific student, I could absolutely arrange that. The cost varies from year to year with exchange rates but it comes out to around $1200 a year. Email me at tanzaniaeducationproject@gmail.com to talk more. Thanks!!
As you have experienced it yourself (and as I wrote in my other comment), I think that coming to Africa and see the reality in person is in itself very valuable. We need more people who get a realistic picture of Africa to take home and share with friends.
If there are people who want to do that, maybe I can help arrange things locally. I would recommend individuals only, or families, but not groups in order to allow the visitors to focus on their interactions with locals and not just socialize with each other.
I agree. The only issue I have is that for the price of a plane ticket and hotel, a kid could go to school for a whole year. Also, going to Tanzania or similar places just to experience the poverty can be very problematic and needs to be done with a lot of awareness. I have seen people go to Tanzania and leave with what seemed like a very distorted view of the country and the people. I do really appreciate you sharing your perspective on this thread.
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Could a group of donors be dedicated to financing an individual - with group members connected to each other? Communications could happen on one of the federated platforms, maybe coordinated by a temporary group head.
That is certainly a possibility. I'd love to talk more about it. You can reach me at tanzaniaeducationproject@gmail.com