599 points | 5h ago | Discuss on Hacker News | Back to Radar
Weird HN type question. On your site you mention paying $5 for hosting the site but didn't mention that here. We're you able to figure out a free way to host?
Shouldn't it be @gmail.com not .org?
However, just the fact that she is so educated, regardless of the degree, I think can make a huge impact on her village. Most adults I met there had around a second or third grade education at most. Many never went to school at all. The fact that she can speak English, use a vomputer, and teach could be transformative.
People leaving a village or city for other opportunities is nothing new and something pretty much all humanity (and species) experience.
I think it's hard to get child curious towards particular domain if they don't get any external push of some sort. I got into computer science because I used to tweak computers & play games in childhood in home computer.
Let people self-direct, even if not everyone follows an optimal route. It's a numbers game.
The focus on “the market” is a disease which narrows our thinking. For all we know, her language studies might allow her to communicate with many more people and cultures from the outside and bring much more prosperity to the village than an architect.
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 do believe however that it is possible to have an influence on what people experience. For one it is not even necessary to travel to remote villages. One can see the reality in the cities and just a few km out. I would introduce them to average people here, meet business owners and give them an insight to what is a typical life here.
This also should not be a short trip. A month minimum. And ideally not in a hotel but some form of homestay or maybe AirBnB where you have to cook for yourself. Go to the market, buy ingredients, realize what is available to the average person. Then maybe visit a village and find the difference. The idea is to get an experience of what is it like to live here, and not just be a tourist.
Any of these visitors can then multiply their impact just like you did. They can motivate their friends to sponsor students and act as ambassadors.
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 will say that I could arrange video calls for sure if you wanted to support a kid. I want to grow this as much as possible and trust is the way to do that. I'm all ears for anyone with any advice for how to build trust.
Thank you!
too often the work involved in taking it to an organization level is written off by the doners, and / or taken advantage of by the org. but renting a building and hiring people to take calls, perform accounting, etc has real cost that cuts into donations but it is also an area of job creation. Those jobs created, imo, are incredibly important and when they are given to people in the donating country it turns into mostly just economic activity in the doner country run on donations with just whatever amount is leftover going to the actual aid. of which, without any outright corruption, people are always eager to spend that money to make the organization side of things better.. or invest it into the organization under the guise (genuine or not) of scaling the organization such that donating a bit less today leads to more donations tomorrow. and then it becomes like any other business mostly running on debt and the actual donations are like a material cost that is constantly pressured to be cut down to pay back debts
As a side note. I was once in a remote part of the Caribbean. When I was there I saw a shack selling Tom's shoes (the ones where if you buy a pair they donate a pair to someone in need). It seemed to me that Tom's shoes had donated to the local government, who then sold the shoes to a merchant who was selling them at this market. That means the local cobbler was basically out of work while the shoes were being supplied, and other shoe venders were losing out on sales, overall having a negative impact on the economy. On top of that all, Tom's shoes are very low quality and the pair they donate is even lower quality so within a few months they would wear out.
That being said, I want people to trust the effort, and if that means having some sort of communication or feedback from the kids in the program, then I'm totally OK with that.
I think the most interesting thing about this is that no one but the kids benefit from this. I take zero payment and everyone involves is volunteering. It's not easy to find an organization that doesn't spend %30 of their budget on ads and overhead.
It would make sense to separate kids from the people who are donating money to them, but they could have offered to let you chat with the parents.
Also the organization only talked about girls and never mentionned the boys in the schools. Unbalanced providence is a pretty important trigger to me, it's the source of my own suffering.
Just donated $100US
Your impact is undeniable, and i think quite importantly very tangible and concrete to you. Very inspiring.
How did you end up in Ibumila? Do you ever go back there?
You ask how much can a village change. Are you trying to document that in any way?
A friend of a friend of my parents heard that I was going and asked me to check up on a orphanage they were funding in the Njombe region. That's how I ended up in such a remote place. I helped work on the orphanage and spent time getting to know the village. That's where I met Anwarite.
I go back every few years to check up on things. It's quite the journey to get there.
I haven't though of documenting actual data points about this yet. I think that's a good idea. Any ideas on where to start?
I think it’s important to be careful with this. “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” and all that. You’re doing something good and your heart seems in the right place, so don’t lose that. It’s perfectly fine to measure your success with “the people from the village tell me it’s having a positive impact” without having to quantify things yourself, as long as you’re happy that the money is being used for the intended purpose.
It would be very satisfying to find out that one of the kids is now a doctor or nurse and working in the clinic that services the town. Or somebody studied agriculture and now helps farmers in the area.
There are a lot of success stories that could be a success for the person but maybe not for the town (like the person got their degree and was able to build a great life in some other place). I can't imagine there's a ton of opportunity in rural Tanzanian communities...
How did you get that impression? I can't conform that at all. Rent in rural areas and outside of city centers is very low. If they rent at all. Local tribes live on land that they own or get assigned to by the government and at least don't have to pay for. The rest is food and other necessities.
The issue with micro-loans is that you need infrastructure to track/enforce the re-payments. I don't see how it can be done without significant local support and it may even have some legal implications.
When I was a student I made (very!) modest contributions to clean water projects, microfinance organizations, and the reports I now read as a mature adult are so gratifying.
I also try to keep a "charity" type project in my queue - volunteering my tech skills to help fix/build things for NGOs so fun to look back on.
Those two sites help with job matching for nonprofits. The first has both volunteering and paid positions, the second only paid AFAIK.
While this is of course closely related to EA, which many people here are (both deservedly and undeservedly) not big fans of, it doesn't require you to choose some specific charities or agree with their moral framework. Consistently donating money to whatever cause you personally value would make the world a much better place compared to not donating anything.
I really recommend people consider doing it regardless of their views on EA or the charities they recommend. I'm not a big fan of the modern EA community myself, but I agree that the money that barely make a difference in my life could be life changing for others.
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
On a somewhat unrelated note, also consider signing up for blood and stem cell donation!
You may see it as cynical or unfair but that's unfortunate reality of time we currently live in.
It's fine. There is plenty of good in the world. Touch some grass and take a deep breath.
Maybe you just don't want to donate resources in general, because otherwise surely there exists some channel you could witness with your own eyes and donate to with confidence.
> hot take :/ Would you really have trouble trusting the OP?
Yes? Your first instinct when someone tells you a sob story or an epic western savior spiel is to do your due diligence.
Recent HN account, the website is a year old, they don't list the 501 EIN and searching for "Tanzania Education Project" on https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ yields nothing. OP doesn't list his name on the website (but it is on gofundme).
OP seems genuine, but there are many red flags.
My name is Luke Bodmer. I graduated in June with a PhD in Computational Science from the University at Buffalo in New York and I am currently working in los angeles as a post-doc in Nuerosurgery at a major hospital doing cancer research. I'm a real person, you can look me up!
Not listing the EIN was an oversight. It is EIN: 87-3919577. I'll add it to the site when I get home tonight from work. If you look it up you might see "Ibumila Fund" which is what it was called before I named it to Tanzania Education Project.
The epic western savior thing is very cringy and I don't know how to avoid it at his point in the project. I try to limit my role as much as possible and have everything done by Tanzanians in Tanzania. Eventually I hope to remove myself from the site and the story and have it be a fully Tanzanian effort. I don't see how I can remove myself at this point.
Ideally I don't want people to look at this effort as "oh look at how good of people we are!". My hope is that people will assess their situation and the situation of the children in the village and feel compelled to give because it is fair and right.
I appreciate your skepticism and I think its totally fair. This post is really the first time I'm going public beyond my inner circle with this effort and any tips on how I can build trust are really appreciated.
Honestly I made my first social media account about 4 months ago just to prove I was a real person after I finished my PhD and was applying for the next steps. I've never been one to post on the internet or engage with social media. I don't really know the etiquette of any other social site so I figured I would reach out here first since it felt familiar.
A key point was the organization didn't finance things. Instead they financed seminars, workshops and such. They'd pay for travel, food and accommodations, as well as renting a place and one or more speakers.
They'd facilitating people learning basic accounting skills which they could use in the co-op back home to make it harder for another co-op member to embezzle money, for example.
A lot of aid per buck this way.
Seems like you're well on your way with something similar. Well done!
Relevant to the topic: https://www.cato.org/books/beautiful-tree
I also did something sort of similar: I had a close friend in Brazil (former roommate when he eas in the US; self deported) who was going through a very difficult time. As an experiment..I gave him $100/month, no strings attached. Blow it on food and games, rent, whatever he wants.
Tl;dr it went very well, his life significantly improved, I did it because he was my friend, I had the money, and wanted to see what would happen.
We Skyped after his shift ended one night and he was very depressed. With a VPN and a credit card I ordered him Dominos to cheer him up. I sent a feast that.. only cost me $10.[1]
Realizing the exchange rate benefit, I got the idea of giving him $100 each month as an experiment; $500 Brazilian Reals.
I wanted to know if the extra money would help and if I could use the exchange rate to help my friend get to a better place in life. Sort of a UBI but not quite.
Now, $100 to me is a bit of money, but 500 BR to him was a crazy amount of money to be given.
Over six months, it allowed him to quit his job at McDonald's, get out of a financially unstable roommate situation, move closer to his family in his own place, and find a better job. He started dating again.
I told him I would commit to a year, but he actually said at the 6.5 month mark that he's doing so well that I don't have to keep giving him money.
Three years later he's still doing great. I have concluded from this that more money in our pocket always helps, but there is a certain responsibility (maybe in general) needed when a gift like that lands in our laps. It can be easy to blow it [2] but just as easy to use it to move life forward.
It has certainly made me more ..aware/appreciative of my privilege and (sometimes fragile) security.
[1]. Two medium four topping pizzas, two 2-litre bottles of soda, breadsticks, and chicken nuggets.
[2]. I was once given a generous stipend from the Student Government of $140 which I did not use for school supplies, rent, or even groceries. Nope. I bought alcohol.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/15/how-likely-universal-basic-i...
> My annual high school fees cost $700.
I'd imagine that in many parts of the world where money is tight, you might encounter families who just use the money for other things or all sorts of schemes.
I'd also love to learn more about the 501c3 process and how easy/hard it is.
I suppose one way would be to pay the bills directly. I.e. the money to pay for education could be paid directly to the school, rather than giving it to the student’s family to pay the school. That could even bypass certain situations like the student and one parent being honest but the other parent trying to keep the money.
You could then keep very small tabs on progress. E.g. get notified by the school if the student is missing classes. You could then get in touch with them to see what’s going on (there could be a legitimate reason) and decide if you should keep paying or give the money to someone else.
This is probably better, but just shifts the trust to the institution rather than the individual, which can also be hit or miss.
The institution has more eyes on it than an individual—be it journalists, the government, concerned citizens, even the students themselves—and is thus more likely to be caught in fowl play.
Trust is key in any effort like this. I made some connections to a local church in Njombe (I'm not religious and neither is the organization, anyone is welcome) and met some of the most selfless people I've ever met (special thanks to Sister Theo) who help arrange transportation to and from the schools, and take the kids into town to get supplies, or arrange doctors visits when needed).
The money can be paid directly to the schools via western union and they send me receipts and even report cards.
Another helpful thing is that students have to take national exams in Tanzania at different stages of their education. Those scores get posted to the interent, so I can track progress that way too.
The truth is that there are many families who are working tirelessly to send their kid to school, so the motivation is already really strong in the village.
I go back every few years to check up on things, talk to the schools and give many many thanks to the nuns.
501c3 was fairly easy to set up. About as simple as an llc if I remember correctly, with a little more paperwork. I set it up in Idaho where my mom lives because I tend to move around a lot and she has a permanent address there, and the process is relatively simple in Idaho.
Did you use any online services? Or hire a local lawyer? Care to share approximate cost?
I see you're using PayPal to take donations - any problems with that or considerations of alternatives?
I'm helping with a foreign charity and finding PayPal doesn't work with local banks.
With zero submissions to your name there is something you could do if you wanted to change what gets posted to HN.
I often think sometimes with these diffuse mega-charities, you never know where the money ultimately ends up or what difference it makes.
At least with your donations you can see for sure where the money went and the direct benefit it had.
A lot of these mega-charities seem to just be in business to "raise awareness of issue x" which also generates more donations to the charity so they can raise even more awareness.
A local charity to me has just had to cease operating. They provided free minibus travel for elderly/less mobile people. Nothing fancy, but it met a need and was tangible.
Yes, that too.
> A lot of these mega-charities seem to just be in business to "raise awareness of issue x" which also generates more donations to the charity so they can raise even more awareness.
I've seen this with Greenpeace. When I was a kid living in Nieuwendam there was a guy that had emigrated to NZ with family nearby to where we lived that went on the first edition of the Rainbow Warrior. The one the French secret service sank in an attempt to get rid of Greenpeace (and which killed Fernando Pereira). At that time they were 'madmen in zodiacs' and this guy ended up as the skipper of the Rainbow Warrior.
The transition from 'doing good stuff at scale' to 'international organization that is raising money while also doing good stuff at scale' was a hard one. They did their level best to stay active but as a fraction of total income vs expenditure on action the relationship has shifted considerably over the years.
> A local charity to me has just had to cease operating. They provided free minibus travel for elderly/less mobile people. Nothing fancy, but it met a need and was tangible.
That's super sad in a way, because especially for the elderly you can see their world shrinking year by year and such services can make a massive difference to people's lives.
Quick searches of tax filings and napkin math suggest the top 10 charities by donations in the US spend between <1% and <9% on fundraising with the exception of St. Jude which is still only 15%.
Could you fund a scholarship or a specific department or something with the universities instead of sponsoring an individual person?
This is a bit of pressure on me as you might imagine, which is why I've kept it small until today. I want to make sure that if everyone stops giving then I can personally keep things going.
My hope now is to expand it to the point where x amount of donations mean another kid can join the program.
Seeing this response from HN has been really insightful and I hope to add more kids soon now that I see the reaction that people have.
It was founded by Franz Gastler [2] when he visited India a couple of decades ago and spent time in some _really_ rural parts of the country. I'm proud to call him a friend, and have volunteered myself at the Yuwa School to teach math/CS. Through this school, girls have ended up at Harvard (!!) with scholarships, who would've never stepped out of their villages and probably ended up as child brides. I usually introduce him to my compatriots as the firangi who's done more for our country than anybody else I know!
Also, this donate link - https://yuwa-india.org/donate/ - does work.
Eventually I would love to do more work in the US. I'm a postdoc now so I'm still not in a personal position to make a meaningful contribution to an American education, but one day I plan to get there.
I don't know what happened to the money. Ostensibly the director used it to support children in his own school. As such the money has likely not been wasted, but the trust is broken because people don't take being honest seriously.
This is unfortunately not an isolated case. I heard from another organization that is supporting orphans in Uganda that at some point they found out that some of the children were not really orphans. It wasn't their fault. The orphanage they worked with wasn't straight forward in their communication. It may even have been an innocent translation error, or misunderstanding. It is not uncommon that families send their children to orphanages temporarily while they can not afford to care for them.
The point is, that it is very difficult to verify what the real truth is. And it takes time to establish trust. The main problem is the stark difference in income. Even to middle class locals, as a middle class westerner I appear insanely rich to them. They have no idea that I am struggling just as much to find work, and that I can't afford to help them pay for what even I consider luxuries. The TV has many shows about the life of more well off people or from other countries giving people a false impression of what is a normal life in other countries.
I can only tell you this because I actually came to Africa to see the reality on the ground for myself. With my children I could live at home semi-comfortably with government child support and unemployment benefits (as a single parent with young children taking a full-time job is out of the question). Instead I have to get by with finding online work, which is getting increasingly harder. Or I have to rely on sponsors to support my work.
I didn't come to Africa with big goals. Especially not with the idea that I could actually make a difference. I came here to learn, and to teach my children about the reality of the world. I also try to work with students and young developers to give them work experience in software development. Currently I guide the software team in a company that is producing electronic learning kits for robotics, physics, etc for schools.
It hasn't been easy. I had a stable client when I came here paying me enough to cover the life here. But after a year I lost that customer and two years later my savings were used up. The move from Uganda to Tanzania was actually cost driven because living in Uganda was a lot more expensive. I am now struggling to get by and I don't know how much longer I can afford to stay here. I would like to dedicate more time to helping students but the struggle to find work is taking most of my focus.
Besides software development, one thing I would like to do is to audit the work NGOs are doing here on behalf of the people who donate to them. I could travel and produce independent reports on what the results are from the money you donate.
I do hope that I will get over this struggle and that I'll be able to live here for several more years.
Or similarly, a single fund someone can contribute to where the money goes to high-impact charities like this one.
Btw, this tip-toes on ideas behind the now-infamous "Effective Altruism" crap, and I'd like to stay away from that as much as possible.
Note - I did this because I also received such a scholarship and it was critical in building my sense of belonging. Call your alumni association, they can help you and would be delighted to hear from you.
Not entirely sure what you're insinuating about the OP's intentions, but I think if one is running a non-profit, telling people in order to try to get more help for the cause is a wonderful thing indeed!
"Save A Kid"
It costs $100 to buy the game, and it's $15 per month to play.
When you pick a character, you get to pick a Country of origin, and then an age and a sex. Then you get to start customizing, by looking for a character that has a given race or religion, if you care about that. For newbies, I'd definitely recommend picking a character that speaks a language you can speak fluently. And if you're an Expert, you can play a character that has different Disadvantages. It doesn't give you any bonus attributes, but you get bragging rights for playing one of them well. There's like, Orphan and Kid-With-AIDS, and then there are harder ones like "Scarred by War" where the kids have missing limbs, etc. Anyway, newbies should probably avoid those at first.
So, anyway, it's kind of like The Sims, or a Tamagotchi, or Farm Town, or something.
You log on every day, and depending on the character you picked, you either get an email, or maybe a voice mail or a video mail. The character tells you about how much it appreciates the new computer and the food. The first couple levels, it's all about gaining Health Points. You can totally nerf your character by spending some of your monthly allotment of extra gold points on buffing the kid's parents, if he has them. The parents start generating more gold points on their own, which makes it a lot easier to play. Some people even buy buffs online, which I think is cheating, but for a newbie, it's an easy way to keep your kid alive.
Anyway, you and your friends can make a clan, and all play characters in the same village. I've even heard that some really crazy rich players can buy buffs for the whole village, like a potable water and electricity system.
There are Events in the game, where like the country the kid is in goes into War. That sucks, because sometimes you lose your character, and the game is perma-death, which is lame. They do a really good job making the game realistic, because sometimes you even see in the news that the real country is in war. Most of the time, they just make stuff up though, because most of the wars never show up on TV, but your character won't shut up about them.
Anyway, it's a sandbox game, which some people don't like. But the AI is incredible. Your character will like ask you how they can keep their food from spoiling, and if you look it up online, and explain to them how to do it, they can save some of their food. Or like, how they can build a windmill from scrap metal.
Anyway, you play the same character as long as you want to, but most people get bored after the kid has a job and their own family, and they start over at level one. Restarting costs another $100 though.
The game developers say if too many people play the game, they might even run out of characters to play. I don't buy it. They'll always make up some new War, or some world-shattering Disaster like a typhoon or something, and then a bunch of new characters will open up. Expansion packs, and all that.
A lot of people play this game like 40 hours a week, or something ridiculous. Some people say that playing this game has changed their lives or whatever, and they give up their jobs and play it full time.
Anyway, I guess you can already play most of those mini-games in other forms, but until they package it up in a nice box that you can buy at Best Buy, and they set up some dedicated servers, and set up a scoring ladder (good grades in school, etc.) and maybe some achievements ("high school diploma", "got a job," etc.), oh and a nice technical support line to answer questions and give advice, I don't think the game will really take off.
https://musicianswithoutborders.org
They have locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Congo, El Salvador, Palestine, Jordan, Netherlands, Ireland, Kosovo, Rwanda, North Macedonia and others.
They have a special program called 88 Keys, you donate less that $100 a month and help keep their lights on and the programs running. Their website is very transparent, they are a verified Dutch non-profit / stichting. The feels are really high with these people. They could really use help right now as funding is increasingly challenging, as governments are looking at spending on war rather than peace.
The current teachers in the rock school are the kids who went into the program when it's started. True success.
Donations are tax deductible for Dutch and US.
Absolute kudos!
Again, there is a typo on the email on the site. It should be TANZANIAEDUCATIONPROJECT@GMAIL.COM not .org. I'll change that as soon as I get home tonight. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you!!
It used to be registered as "Ibumila Fund" but I changed the name since no one understood what that meant.
Thank you very much!
My wife and I setup a DAF (Donor Advised Fund) so we can make quick donations when we see causes like this that we want to support. Unfortunately "Tanzania Education Project" is not found when searching via ours hosted at Schwab so we can't make a donation unless we have the tax ID and I can't find it on the website either.
Minor donation sent, you'll see a check in a week or two! We've traveled in Tanzania and can't speak highly enough about the wonderful the people are and how hard they and their families work to survive.
Comments are loaded live from Hacker News and are not stored by Mid or Real.
codetiger 5h ago on HN
lukehandcool (author) 5h ago on HN