Progress of Africa Charity Project
I hope to make it to Africa in the spring of 2012 and start with some projects, in the least with my own funding. In the meantime, I'm in touch with many people on the ground and the plan is to help them start teaching Africans how they can learn all the tools they need to earn a living through the internet - as I have been doing for the past 20 years. Provide a downloadable package (Free Educational Program) which can be distributed for free and which Africans can read and learn offline, with tips how to find work once they have developed some of the necessary skills. If you are in Africa or elsewhere and would like to help, there are many ways you can volunteer - be it from your own home or on the ground in Africa.
Background
I began this project in September of 2009. It first started as a simple
concept and website, which I forwarded to key people for their feedback. After
receiving sufficient encouragement I purchased the Africa-charity-project.org
domain and approached some more people for their feedback. About a month later
it occurred to me that I could approach my African translators, so I sent about
500 emails and received quite varied and interesting responses, which I posted
on the
Africa Charity Project correspondence pages.
By corresponding to Africans on the ground it gave me great encouragement and
ideas how to go about it. As it stands at the end of November, 2009, I have the
following tentative action plan:
 Since I've recently signed a contract for a year of highspeed internet
through mobile phone in Bulgaria (without which it is difficult for me to run my
business, which helps support this project), I plan to stay in this country
until fall of 2010, by which time I hope to have many things organized and
hopefully can start heading south. By this time I hope to have accumulated
enough of my own cash to drive down that far, and have filled up my
caravan
truck with laptops and other necessary equipment. If possible I'd like to
drive my own truck into Africa, since it is my
dream to drive around the world with it, but this will obviously depend on
import regulations and the authorities I will be corresponding with.
Because I have been communicating with and helping one
charity organization
in Kenya my heart is so far set on going to Nairobi and help out the shelter
for homeless shelter for children there. It should also give me good and
additional contacts in that country. If possible I'd like to drive straight down
and not ship my truck with the goods from Alexandria, as was suggested to me several
times. If I will be able to drive all the way I'd like to set up villages in Syria, Egypt,
Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea
and Kenya,
or any other countries along the way where it is feasible. I will obviously
research each country carefully and not blindly enter some region where it could
lead to the end of this project and me personally.
Once I have some villages "up and running", I will maintain email
correspondence with them, continue to help them through the internet, and use
any potential success to launch into other countries of Africa, using the successful examples to inspire more
ambitious contributions and spearhead the operations into other villages and
countries. I am already communicating with people in
Mali,
South Africa and other
countries, but Africa is a big continent and have decided that Syria, Egypt
and Kenya will be my safest
places to start, and logistically most accessible considering the drive through
Turkey,
which I will also look forward to.
So my progress so far has been mostly networking and the accumulation of
knowledge, but I feel I've made an acceptable start, and now that I have
received sufficient encouragement from my African correspondents, I have set my
goals for a departure by fall of 2010.
Below is what I have formulated for upcoming tasks. If anyone has any
suggestions or help with networking I would be glad to hear about it. Getting
excited!
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To Do List
- register a non-profit charity in Europe and/or the
US, to help with
potential contributions
- approach all governments in the countries I hope to help to get
their feedback/approval/support
- approach more aid and other organizations as they are suggested to
me
- seek out and find sponsoring agencies which can provide support in
some way
- continue to network with people on the ground (in
Africa) to slowly find suitable villages and reliable
recipients to this project
- start to set up a template for the laptops, complete with
instructions with which Africans will be able to teach themselves all the
necessary skills, and then find volunteer translators who could translate
everything into the various languages (space permitting, each computer
should have all available language versions)
- begin to formulate a legal contract, with the support of local
authorities, which state that the solar panels and all contributed equipment
remains the property of this organization and will be taken back and donated
to others if the laptops have been used for an unintended purpose, such as
playing games
- find appropriate solar panel
manufacturers/distributors/contributors in
Africa or other feasible continents
- find out everything I need to know about internet connections
(such as through 3G mobile phone) in
Africa so that I could be confident that I
can continue to operate my business, and be aware of the various
possibilities so that I can help educate the African villages I will be
helping
Accomplishments So Far
-
Free Educational Program - a freely downloadable manual to help Africans find work through the internet.
-
Wide Rescue Initiative Organization – one African I was emailing with asked me to help him put his organisation on the web: Our mission [here in Kenya] is to conserve the environment, forests and protection of biodiversity, nature and invertebrates, as well as the protection of water resources, water, sanitation, tree planting and to improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities through agricultural development and sustainable agroforestry.
-
Hurumia Watoto Helping Widows with Aids in Tanzania – another African for which I put together a website. Their mission: a community-based organization which became affiliated to the TANZANIA Community based option for protection and organization of widows and women, health and AIDS infection, and children.
-
Hamurwa HNCP ICT Centre to Help Needy Children And Orphans In Kabale Uganda
– another website: There are 210 needy children in the project, 104 of them
are orphans while others are needy. The primary goal of the project is to
cater for the educational needs of the needy children, as most of them are
orphaned, abandoned and/or neglected while others are unable to survive on
their own, despite having a relative to stay with.
-
Sadani Education Trust Fund
Another organisation helped by Albert from Hurumia Watoto above. 600,000 bricks to build a school with local hands and volunteers. Helped them find volunteers too. Still waiting for more information from them to further develop their website.
Some Related Research So Far
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