Tell HN: I've been paying for a rural Tanzanian's education for 10 years
This summer she graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam with a degree in Language Studies, and last week she told me she'd been accepted into a Master of Arts in Swahili program there. Roughly 2% of people from Njombe ever finish a university degree. Her goal is to get a PhD and then to bring it back to the region.
Her entire 18-month master's program (tuition, registration, fees, books, supplies) comes to 3,060,000 TSh, about $1,161.
Since this worked out, I kept adding students as I could afford to, and in 2021 I registered it as a 501(c)(3), the Tanzania Education Project. It supports five students from Ibumila now, school fees and healthcare. I kept it small while I was finishing my PhD because I didn't want commitments I couldn't personally guarantee for a decade; I've since started a postdoc, so it feels like the right time to grow past my own paycheck. The long-term goal is that every kid in the village has access to education and healthcare. I sometimes think of this project as a slow experiment. How much could the village itself change over someone's lifetime if the kids have access to education?
https://tanzaniaeducationproject.org/ is the website. Nobody takes a salary, and aside from bank fees the money goes to the students. If anyone wants to fund Anwarite's master's specifically, it's here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-anwarite-to-her-masters-prog...
Happy to answer any questions or take any tips you all might have about doing this sort of thing.
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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.
https://rendered.one/
Those two sites help with job matching for nonprofits. The first has both volunteering and paid positions, the second only paid AFAIK.
The copy on this side is synthetic and I'm betting my left nut on it. The thing that irritates me the most is the sentence fragment sing-song, the overexplaining, and the empty drama everywhere.
OpenAI did an 80% good job analysing this Claudesque landing page nightmare: https://chatgpt.com/share/6ac83ba2-2fe8-83ed-9000-939dc2fa0a...
(Sorry for being lazy here, I'm honestly just super tired of repeating the same things over and over again. Nothing against you, it's a 100% me problem and growing frustrating with the slop firehose. )
Second one a bit too corporate-y for my taste, but looks like it fills a good gap.
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!
But then came all the people who believe AI will absolutely kill us all, and nowadays the EA community is mostly Anthropic employees thinking their work is the most important thing anyone can ever do and that they're literally saving humanity from extinction. It's just based on vibes, but they try to make it seem very evidence based by associating with a hardcore utilitarian philosophy.
It's kinda funny going to any EA website and seeing paragraphs like
"What can X$ achieve? 1. Save a human life 2. Save 500 animal lives 3. Fund 1 week of AI research"
One of those is not like the others, and yet the people advocating for it are the most vocal and famous part of EA.
And people don’t like them for that exactly, quite deservedly.
If you're talking about stem cell and blood donations, yes, there are many EAs who are against that for stupid reasons like "why would I spend 30 minutes donating blood when I can spend them on my very effective work", but those are also just the vocal minority and most are pretty reasonable about doing easy helpful things in addition to the main "effective" stuff. Notably for example, many EAs even do undirected kidney donations, despite other EAs arguing it's not "effective" enough.
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.
keeping that in mind I believe you started at the right place as HN is probably more forgiving, especially when it turns out that the person in question is able to strike the right tone to fit in, which I believe you do.
I am in a similar position having created this account once I decided to move to Africa, and I am still trying to figure out how to promote my work. As part of that I try to engage on topics that are related to Africa to slowly develop my standing and share my experience.
(I think it's an unusual path, but it looks legit.)
> 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.
I think your etiquete is fine, but asking for money always raise suspicion.
I actually spent 2 years in Córdoba Argentina studying medicine before covid threw a wrench in that. That's when I pivoted to come back to the US to pursue an idea for a medical imaging device I thought up.
My PhD was focused on building a proof of concept for a mobile and affordable medical imaging device. Honestly the concept certainly tied back to spending time in rural hospitals in Tanzania (for other people, I wasn't sick) and seeing the lack of imaging and resources in those places.
The lab I'm working in is "mathematical neuro-oncology" and it happens to be in the neurosurgery department of a major US hospital. We're essentially trying to use our computational skills to make progress in brain cancer research so they hired me for my background in computation and imaging and medicine.
It may be a nice submission for HN. (But wait a week or so before posting it.)
[Hi from Buenos Aires!]
I take your point. I have some things I could submit and I'll contribute more hacker related topics soon.
I think an important part is to figure out what is the best way to contribute. While it is good to let Tanzanians do as much as possible by themselves, they can't reach out to your friends. Only you can do that. When I tell my country mates about programmers in Africa, and I get a response like "They can do that?" with a big surprise impression on their face [1], I don't see how any African could do that by themselves. Bridges need to be built from both sides. If you remove yourself then you end up with half a bridge.
[1]: That was just one reaction I got when I told people about my work in Africa. Starkly contrasted by another reaction which was the opposite: "Oh cool, I am hiring devs in Ghana, they are awesome!". It's not all lost, but a lot of people simply still don't know. And that includes African-Americans.
That is sort of the light I see this in. Instead of people thinking "oh what a good person" I hope that they think "wow, look what a difference such a small amount of money can make. And look at all the untapped potential in these kids".
One thing that I feel is important, is that I do not believe charity, handouts in general are a good idea. they make people dependent or expectant of such charity instead of motivating them to solve problems.
Paying for education however is different. Education should be free. I come from a country where all education including university is free. So when I pay for a students education I am not being charitable, but I am correcting an error in the system.
Another way to look at it is to see going to school as the kids job. I literally got one kid off the streets by paying for their school and board, and all other personal expenses. The kid had already dropped out of school and ran away from home, and I offered to help only if and as long they would go back to school. That was their job. Their obligation.
I've been funding Microfinance loans, $25 at a time, for a while now. Just checked the numbers - I have spent only about 5K in total, made almost 68K for ~2900 loans (keep recycling the money when repayments come in).
Lost motivation for a few years in between, after Covid. Used to think it is just $25, what difference can it make? I was totally wrong. $25 won't even get a good pizza these days in most American cities, it is not a lot in the west. But it can have amazing purchasing power in Africa, parts of Asia etc.
What I am trying to say is - even if we have just $10, it is okay, it can be of immense help to someone. There is Watsi, there is Kiva, Doctors without Borders and many more great projects, like Tanzania Education Project.
Here is a very simplistic (and optimistic) calculation by ChatGPT - simply loaning $25 month consistently can help more than a 1000 people in 20 years
https://chatgpt.com/share/6ac80150-feb8-83e8-a6b0-4b162c056a...
I used to think I need lots of capital to help, this shows how wrong that line of thinking is.
But more importantly, can you share the details of how you did that practically? Did you do this yourself or as part of a larger organization who just took your money and paid you back later?
https://www.kiva.org/about/how
I also tried a couple of other Microfinance orgs (can't remember the names now), but kept going back to Kiva. Been doing it for 15 years, so it slowly adds up, even though I wasn't consistent.
That's what I expected. Thanks. Your wording: "made almost 68K for ~2900 loans" had me confused. Making money means profit or income to me. You didn't make any money but you helped 2900 people.
68k/25=2720. That suggests that the defaults are less than 10%. That's not so bad I think.
Your calculation is right (there were some loans that were refunded, so it is a bit higher than 2720). You could ask ChatGPT (or use Excel) for a quick calculation. $25 a month is such a small amount in the west, if anyone wants to do it (I did it inconsistently, some months $0 some months $200).
All this to show - a dollar goes a LONG way in parts of Asia, Africa etc.
Her entire 18-month master's program (tuition, registration, fees, books, supplies) comes to 3,060,000 TSh, about $1,161.
$1,161 - that is a shockingly small amount for a 18 month master's program!
Another org I admire is https://watsi.org/ Costs listed there is so small (compared to the west) that every dollar can help
Most charities do more harm than good. Does this charity operate in the best interest of the state? which state? Why don't people ask these questions instead of consuming feel-good slop?
It's not an entirely moral judgement if your actions put them in conflict with the state.
Is getting more children to school not in everyone's best interest? As for conflict with the state, in Tanzania any charity/NGO has to operate for three years before they are even allowed to apply for official recognized status. It makes sense to me. They can't control what everyone is doing. So go, do, and if you want to be officially recognized then show what you did for 3 years and they'll see if they like it. If they don't, they'll probably be told to stop. Small operations like this one can probably be ignored.
Your impact is undeniable, and i think quite importantly very tangible and concrete to you. Very inspiring.
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.
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!
[1] https://yuwa-india.org
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Gastler
Also, this donate link - https://yuwa-india.org/donate/ - does work.
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!
It was really hard when we stopped receiving cute drawings. We're still have the GO AWAY CORONA :( drawing.
Edit: thanks OP for inspiring me, I've registered for monthly donations to the TEP.