Humanize the Earth!

Blatant fund raising appeal email and follow-ups

I sent out this email to most everyone I know:

Usually I write incredibly interesting stories about my favorite subject (me), but this time the story is only to explain why I’m asking for money. And I’m only going to give the short version. For the long version, please follow the links below, especially the dropcash one.

I’ve been working with volunteers in a refugee camp in Ghana. They’ve been doing some volunteer projects of various kinds and need help to buy more shovels and wheelbarrows and other kinds of tools to make their projects even stronger. (see the links for more info)

I have new friend that decided twice last week to make coffee at home and throw the $2 she would’ve otherwise spent at the coffee shop into the tip jar. This can also be done by making lunch from home instead of eating out. Of course larger donations are also welcome, but every bit counts and no amount is too small.

By the way, the progress meter on the site now shows we’ve raised $470 of our $1000 goal, but I’ve also received some donations that didn’t register (or were by personal check instead of online), so the total is actually $586 today.

Thanks so much!

peace,
ted

–
To donate for shovels & wheelbarrows for Liberian refugees’ campaign for non-violence & fight against malaria and agriculture projects, please visit: http://budaburam.blogspot.com
http://www.dropcash.com/campaign/tedernst/more_shovels_wheelbarrows

Humanize the Earth! http://tedernst.com http://chicagohumanist.org

though it took some time because my email program wouldn’t let me send too many at a time and then stopped sending altogether in the middle so I had to take a break until the next day. Anyway, here’s one of the responses I received:

So, when you get the $1000, what happens next?

and then my answer back:

I’ll send it by Western Union to the orientors of the three teams (an orientor is a volunteer organizer that formed a team - in this case these three orientors are all in my team). They’ve all given me budgets and they’ll spend the money on the tools needed for their particular team. They’ll give me receipts when I get there next time (not sure when yet, but I’ve been averaging 2-4 trips per year for the last 5 years or so). My goal for this $1000 is to help these teams expand their actions (neighborhood cleanup and community gardening) so that they can involve more people in taking responsibility for their own lives.

Since Sept of 2003 we’ve been working there on a campaign for Non-violence and Fight Against Malaria. What I hoped for that campaign in the beginnign was that we’d be able to find a way to subsize purchase of mosquito nets for a large number of people. Now that we have more than 1000 people, that’ll be the next step, fundraising and finding a supplier so we can at least cover all of the pregnant women and the children under five.

More questions?

Elizabeth G. Jonckheere August 16, 1918 - January 12, 2005

I love you Grandma.

PSI (Population Services International)

This NGO PSI (Population Services International) has been supplying wholesale (or nearly so) mosquito nets to the Humanist Movement in Cameroon. I need to find out more. They do seem to work in Zambia and Congo, but not Liberia or Ghana. From their website :

To some, PSI is an enigma. It claims to be “social” in nature, but employs a private sector patois to describe itself, filled with phrases from the world of business and advertising like “bottom line,” “focus groups” and “entrepreneurship.” It calls itself nonprofit and says that it serves the poor, but charges a price for all of its products and services. It has the word “population” in its name but also works in health areas that clearly have little to do with population. Is this the result of an identity crisis, lack of strategic planning or something else?

categories: Humanist Movement partners

Satelite Internet

laptops for Africa

In our Humanist Movement council (C180) we have people in the US, Iceland, Columbia, Zambia, Congo, Liberia and Ghana. We use email and the telephone to communicate back and forth between all these places, primarily using public internet cafes in Africa & South America and private machines and connections in North America and Europe.

We also take a census every 6 months. In places where we have our own machines, we install a program written specifically for this purpose and in placeew where we don’t have our own, people type the names into a spreadsheet or an email and we do the data entry again in the US to get names into the database.

We have managed to take a few donated computers to various places. We have a laptop in Liberia, at least two desktops in Zambia (one was stolen) and a desktop that may or may not have been stolen in Congo. Old, servicable desktops are easily obtained through donation in the US, but getting them into Africa without paying very high import duties is near impossible. Last time I was in Zambia, I took just the machine itself without a monitor and got through customs unscathed, but then the people have to find a way to get a monitor.

So this all got me to thinking about old laptops. If anyone wanted to donate one (or ten), we’d be grateful. But another way is to buy really old cheap laptops and get them fixed up with our programs on them. I’m experimenting right now. I bought a $79 (free shipping) laptop on ebay. It’s a Compaq that shows up copyright 1996 when you turn it on. It’s running Win98 on a Pentium 133Mhz. It does have a PCMCIA modem connection so I could connect it to my dial-up connection at home to down load what I need to get it ready to go. I’m a bit worried about security without a firewall. I can download a firewall first thing, but Windoze is so bad I’m not sure I want to risk it. I’m working on getting a PCMCIA CM-ROM drive to avoid that problem.

So now I need to compile a list of everything I need to put on it so when I get a second machine, I’ll have a reference guide. Here’s what I have so far (in my head, not on the machine):

• Winsock Firewall - This open source program is small enough to put on a floppy to put on the new machine so it’s safe to connect to the internet to get everything else I need.
• Zip Central - This freeware program allows a file to be compressed and saved in pieces on more than one floppy if it’s too big for one. I’d rather use something open source, but can’t find anything with that feature. 7-Zip says it will have it on the next version. Not sure if the program is legit, however as the site seems to be about opt-in email marketing when you click on privacy or legal. Anyone have another suggestion?

Anyone have any good advice for me as I learn and get this machine ready to go?