BUHANGA - how to help an African Village
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A tiny village in Uganda is transformed by donations from a California nonprofit. Provides a "How-To" guide for people who want to start their own charity Additional text is available at: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rvAnZLdv2_camW3Jbe8lZftajC2XUtLAz10aG-81FIw/edit?usp=sharing
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BUHANGA - how to help an African Village
- 1. Buhanga How to help an African village
- 3. Step #1: Where do you want to do charitable work?
- 12. Step # 2 Find people to trust
- 21. Step # 3 What is your mission? What projects do you want to accomplish?
- 25. Step # 4 Who will help you fund your projects?
- 33. Step # 5 Can you build a ‘Donor Base’?
- 39. Step # 6 Find a village to help
- 45. Buhanga 152 households - 1,200 people - BaKonzo tribe 90% of children go to school barefoot Malaria, flu, pneumonia, hepatitis, cough, wounds, headaches, diarrhea, scabies, cholera, typhoid fever, worm infections High infant mortality rate, and women dying giving birth Girls marry at 15 Most people have only a 5th Grade education Domestic Violence, Alcoholism, Drug abuse Soil Erosion - few trees left, most cut down for firewood Poverty - most people earn less than $1 day Malnutrition / Infertile land / Overpopulation Unclean energy - kerosene
- 53. Water Tank A drainage system on the roof of a building delivers rainwater into a storage tank. Water tank purchased in Kampala for $500 Funds provided by Reddit/Atheism
- 56. Water Pipeline Proposal Extending tapped water to Buhanga. The villagers have to walk 3.5 kms to reach fresh water. The only local water is from an unprotected well full of pathogens. Many children have diarrhea. The project requires purchase of pipes & other materials.
- 61. Food Needs Many Subsaharan children receive only one meal a day - Dinner. In the morning they go to school without breakfast, then they receive no lunch. By the afternoon they are too hungry to learn at school.
- 66. Chicken Project We raised enough funds to purchase 490 egg-laying chickens - plus feeders, drinkers, grain, coops and vaccinations. This provided enough food to support the lunch food program and the clinic.
- 71. Future Path Classroom Meredith Newman Debens of Australia provided funds to build a new brick classroom, plus she designed and paid for the classroom furniture
- 84. Girls Needs Many girls in Subsaharan Africa drop out of school when they hit puberty, because they cannot afford menstrual pads.
- 89. Orphans In western Uganda, 13% of children are orphans. They are the poorest of the poor. They are often unable to go to school, because they cannot pay the school tuition, the fees for books and the school uniforms.
- 93. MicroLoans In SubSaharan Africa, interest rates on a loan are astronomically high -- 50% to 100% percent. A low interest loan can help lift people out of poverty. We provide no interest loans of $500, to be paid back after 6 months or a year.
- 96. Want a Village to Help? We suggest... Kabingo Statistics: Only 550 people Malaria, AIDS, Hepatitis, Diarrhea High Mortality Rate Needs condoms for safe sex and family planning Domestic Violence, Drug Abuse
Editor's Notes
- Earth is a big place with multiple problems. If you’re feeling charitable, and can afford to help or get others to help, there are limitless tasks to be done.
- First you need to need to decide “what good deeds to do, and where to do them? This presentation will explain my own process.
- Africa is the “poorest continent” - if your goal is to help people, this is where there’s the greatest need.
- 233 million people are hungry in Sunsaharan Africa. Many only eat one meal a day.
- 400 million people here work for less than $1 a day, especially in rural areas.
- In the countryside houses are made of mud and sticks.
- Malaria kills 627,000 people annually. AIDS kills more: 1.1 million a year.
- In many villages there is no clean available water - women and girls walk hours a day just to fetch water.
- There are 35 million children in the Sub-sahara who are orphans.
- Many children are born with deformities - like cleft palate and clubfoot -- that would be easily fixed in the developed world. It only costs $200 to fix the clubfeet above; but families don’t have that amount, so children remain crippled.
- I wanted to do charity work in Sub-saharan Africa for many years, but I didn’t know anyone to work with, until recently. Here’s how I got involved...
- Back in 1999, I was a Sex News Columnist for Salon.com, the online magazine. I used this opportunity to write about Africa. I even had an “African” pen name: Hank Hyena
- Here are some African topics I wrote about…
- Years went by… I wasn’t writing for Salon anymore, but I heard a rumor about one of my ex-co-writers: Douglas Cruickshank. He quit being a journalist - at the age of 56 he joined the Peace Corps. He was stationed in Uganda. I emailed him. I asked if I could visit and help raise funds for any projects.
- Douglas told me he was in western Uganda - in the Ruwenzori mountains. I was fascinated.
- The Ruwenzori are the legendary “Mountains of the Moon” - they are on the Equator, but they are 16,000 feet high, with glaciers. Plus gorillas, forest elephants, chimpanzees, and giant cactus plants. I wanted to go there.
- Douglas said his 2-year Peace Corps term was ending soon; he was leaving the region – but I could visit anyway, his replacement was Sarah Castagnola.
- If you’re looking for someone trustworthy to work with in Africa, you can start with the Peace Corps. They have thousands of workers in Africa -- for example: 241 volunteers in Zambia, 166 in Uganda, 122 in Malawi, 138 in Rwanda, and 235 in Ethiopia.
- Douglas also introduced me to three Ugandans he worked with -- Joseph Kasibirehe, Mama Teddy, and Mbusa Chrispus
- I had my perfect place to do charitable work - but now, I needed a project
- I decided to help orphans. Mbusa Chrispus was director of a local nonprofit that taught orphans how to be carpenters.
- I decided to raise money with a GoFundMe campaign - this is a crowdfund platform, like Kickstarter and Indiegogo
- Here’s the campaign cover. I was eager to begin, but I was lacking something important...
- I had no idea who would support this project. Who would donate money to this cause? I contacted all the friends and friends of friends I could think of...
- I lucked out. I found Karl Hale, a Mormon woodworker who wanted to help other woodworkers, just like him, except they were orphans, in Uganda. Karl donated several hundred dollars to the campaign, and he talked Mormon friends of his into donating. He’s a great wood-worker...
- Here’s a sample of what Karl does.
- With Karl’s help, the campaign was successful. I was thrilled. I decided to do more GoFundMes.
- This campaign raised money to buy dresses for orphan girls.
- This campaign raised money for a chicken farm, to support an orphanage.
- This campaign was interesting! A friend of mine in Tennessee thought she was dying of brain cancer. Her dying wish was to have a clinic named after her. We raised the money quickly, but then -- she didn’t die. She was misdiagnosed - it was a benign brain tumor. She’s still alive. We didn’t have to return the money, but the 54 people who donated - none of them donated to my projects again.
- This GoFundMe was the most popular. I am not a Mormon, I am an atheist, a secular humanist. So I decided to start the world’s first atheist orphanage. I got publicity help, and raised all the money I needed in 29 hours. I decided this was the best community for me…
- I compiled an email list of secular humanists, agnostics, atheists, freethinkers, skeptics, and all the other names that non-religious people like me call themselves.
- I now have hundreds of email addresses of past, present, and potentially future donors. I sent them a Newsletter once a month, asking for donations for vaious campaigns.
- I also partnered with other non-religious organizations. In Uganda this makes sense - Uganda is very homophobic, due to certain churches, plus religion prevents most of Ugandans from using condoms. I focused my fundraising efforts on “humanists” – that’s the preferred term for non-religious people in Africa.
- In 2013 I formed a corporation called Brighter Brains Institute -- This title is flexible enough to promote education, cognitive health, and innovative ideas.
- Brighter Brains Institute wasn’t a non-profit, at first. We had a “fiscal sponsor” -- the Peace Development Fund. PDF took donations for us, it issued tax deductions to the contributors, and sent us 90% of the funds. I recommend PDF to anyone seeking a fiscal sponsor.
- But eventually, we got our own non-profit status -- this allows us to give tax deductions immediately to anyone donating to our causes.
- One of my goals from the very beginning was to find a tiny village in the Ruwenzori that I’d have to hike to, on a beautiful trail.
- In November 2015, I flew to western Uganda - hoping to find this small village ...
- I was traveling with my brother Bob - who is a big donor - and his wife Cindy. Here they are squished into a taxi.
- Bob’s son Eric was also with us, with his fiance Courtney.
- We went to the Kyarumba Trading Centre – This is where farmers from surrounding towns sell their produce on Wednesdays and Saturday.
- The Buhanga-Thuligahuma Women’s Collective showed up specifically to see me. They wanted help for their tiny village.
- They told me about their village. It was small, poor, with a lot of problems. Exactly what we were looking for.
- It was located high in the mountains, on a trail too steep for motorcycles. The soil was rocky.
- The classroom of their Mother Givers Primary School was made of sticks and mud – it completely dissolves in a heavy rain storm
- The first thing I asked, is -- “Do you want to be a humanist school?” If they did, it would be easier to raise funds to help them. They agreed. There’s a big interest in humanism from women’s groups who see humanism as a path to gender equality.
- We gave the $50 to rename the school and put up a sign.
- My brother offered to install a clinic; they only cost $1,500 per year. $500 for the medic and $1,000 for medicine and supplies. The woman on the right is Kabugho Venilanda - the medic.
- The clinic also provides Mosquito Nets -- thanks to the generosity of Kerry Mills from Australia. Mosquito nets cost her $7 each - we give them away free.
- Our clinic also provides condoms for free. Male condoms cost us 11 cents each, female condoms cost about 80 cents.
- The Buhanga Women’s Collective had a long list of what they needed. One of the top items was a water tank -- to store rainwater.
- We got a wonderful donation from Reddit/Atheism -- they gave us $500 to buy the tank in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.
- We had it installed and we thanked the donor in stenciled letters.
- The next proposal we got was more expensive. Buhanga needed fresh water. A trench had to be dug up the mountainside, 3.5 kilometers to a spring. We found a donor in Montreal - the cost was $3,000. We wired his money to Uganda.
- The people of Buhanga dug the trench in two days.
- They laid in the pipe
- And set up a faucet right by the primary school.
- Thank you, Darren!
- Next we decided to help the kids get some food.
- We bought them bags of rice -- 50 kilograms for $25
- Darren’s girlfriend, Davida, offered to set up a lunch program for the 115 children at the school, for one term. She provided corn meal, vegetables, beans, with chicken meat every Tuesday and goat meat every Friday. Enrollment at the school jumped to 200 -- parents sent their kids to school for free medical care and free lunch.
- Here they are happily eating
- Yum yum yummy
- Davida wanted her lunch program to be sustainable - we decided to set up a business where profits supported the lunch program. We decided on a chicken farm and raised enough money to buy 490 chickens.
- Every woman in the 38 person collective takes care of 14 chickens.
- They sell the eggs at the Kyarumba Market.
- These are a few Buhanga Women with chicken feeders
- My sister-in-law Cindy donated $1,900 – so they sent her this photo
- Next, the children needed a new classroom
- This is the building they were studying in – note that it is on the side of a cliff – be careful !
- Here’s the other classroom; they cram 70 children inside, dirt floors, no windows and no furniture, except the teacher’s desk.
- A construction crew was hired to build Meredith’s classroom – note the cliff again! Very steep
- Here’s the interior – windows, a cement floor
- Here’s the exterior
- The entire classroom cost only $1,000
- The highlight is the white ceiling, a rarity in rural Uganda. Tourists travel from miles around, to marvel at this architectural wonder.
- These are provided by Scholastic books.
- Note there is no actual furniture.
- Meredith spent $1,000 designing and funding custom-made furniture for her Future Path Classroom.
- Here the teachers and students are showing off the tables, benches, and desks
- Remember the steep cliff ? To prevent erosion, that could send her classroom sliding down the hill – Meredith spent $324 on tree saplings that were planted on the hillside, to keep soil in place.
- Girls in the Sub-Sahara need menstrual pads, but they can’t afford disposable ones. So we bought them AFRIpads – these are washable, reusuable
- Bradley Banks (another Canadian) paid $300 to get a “Girl’s Changing Room” built – this gives girls a private place to change their sanitary pads.
- Here’s the finishing touches
- And a thank you card to Bradley, his wife, his daughter, and four other contributors.
- Buhanga has thirteen orphans who need someone to pay their school fees. Here’s four: Nzyabake Scovia (her Daddy was murdered): Kule Kenned (her Mama died of Snake Bite); Ithungu MacLine (her Daddy died of Typhoid); and Alice Kabugho (her Mother died in a fire). Orphan sponsorship is $100 year.
- Julia Zelevinsky lives in Massachusetts. Her bake sale raised funds to sponsor three orphans. Her grandparents chipped in $1,000 to sponsor the other 10 orphans.
- Here are the orphans with their new lunchboxes – Spiderman is popular – plus new school uniforms. Also, they all got a pair of shoes. Previously they were barefoot or just sandals
- Julia Zelvinsky’s Mother – Karen - set up microlending
- She gave loans to these women, who work collectively on a Pumpkin field.
- And a loan to these two women, who sell passion fruits.
- The last time my brother Bob and I were in Uganda we went on a 20 mile day hike – to the top of a mountain ridge – there we found Kabingo, a tiny community where all the children and many of the old people – had never seen a “white person.” Kabingo needs help. We only have two photos of it, because we were so tired from hiking. All we have is --
- A photo of this bridge we had to cross
- And this photo of the school children – the school is in the background.