Last year was TGUP’s best year, ever. We completed 73 projects, one every five days, in nine developing world countries. We hope to do even more this year. With your help, we will. Here’s some of what we’re up to, so far. | | A New Roof for Manikaji School in Indonesia | | |
In 2011, we helped build the Manikaji School in the remote hamlet of Ban, high in the mountains of East Bali, in Indonesia. It helped more than 80 children have their first classroom ever.
But on January 9th, a typhoon blew a major part of the roof off. This, just as the rainy season was about to begin.
Within hours, we were able to get funds to our partner in Indonesia, the East Bali Poverty Project, so they could put on a new roof.
| | Within a week, the new roof was on and the children were back in school. We are thrilled to be able to do this kind of work—help people who are in emergency distress through no fault of their own. We can only do it because of you. | | Science Lab in a Box in Kenya | |
TGUP’s Science Lab in a Box is one of our most successful programs. It provides the instruments, equipment, supplies, and curriculum to enable any high school in the world (with competent teachers) to carry out world class laboratory work in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.
We have worked for years to help the Ngungu School in Kenya.
| | Two years ago, this is what their science lab looked like. | | This is what it looks like today. | | |
You can’t believe the excitement and pride the students feel about being able to do real Science! They used their new 400X microscopes to show us some of the pathogens living in their drinking water. There were a lot! Ugh.
Which lab would you rather your student study in? Click here to see SLaB’s Lab Procedures and Outcomes document, the core curricular part of the program.
SLaB brings orders of magnitude improvement in the scientific learnings of students who use it. The demand for it is effectively infinite. With your help, we will fund dozens more this year.
| | Save a Girl ™ in Many Countries | | |
TGUP’s Save a Girl ™ program provides washable, reusable sanitary pads to girls in the developing world to help them manage their period so they can stay in school. A SaG kit costs $6 to make but is given free-of-charge to the girls. A kit typically lasts three years.
Last year, we made and distributed almost 19,000 kits:
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According to the World Bank, better educated girls exhibit an astonishing array of pro-development characteristics: they abstain from sex longer; have fewer partners; are more likely to use birth control; delay marriage longer; have fewer children; see that those children are better educated; have better vocational options; contribute more to their communities. The benefits are profound, and literally ripple into eternity.
This is SO working. SaG kits are made in our Sewing Centers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nepal. This year, we will add new Centers in India and West Africa.
Click here if you’d like to read our “Think Piece” on this topic. As it says, “There might be nothing else we could do to so directly accelerate the advancement of the human condition than keep adolescent girls in the developing world in school.”
Thank you for your help that makes this possible.
| | Mega-Project at a School in Kenya | | The Kiahuko School in Kenya is one of the most dire situations we’ve ever seen, and our entire business is dire situations. The school has 8 dirt-floored classrooms for the 487 students. This is the administration building: | | These are the students, assembled in the quad: | | But, there was no electricity. So, we just brought electricity into all of the classrooms. The difference is, well, night and day. (Can you imagine going to class in this room without the lights? It was a cave, as were all the other classrooms.) | | |
And, there was no water. The students had to carry water with them from home. We brought in water. Now, the students have fresh water to drink, and can wash their hands.
The school’s latrines had filled in and the Health Department threatened to shut the entire school down. We built two new sets of latrines, with four stalls each, for girls and boys.
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There are three sub-projects still left to do. First, we’re building a kitchen, to replace this, the existing kitchen:
| | We will replace it with one like this (that we just finished at another school a few miles away): | | |
Which kitchen would you rather your children be fed from?
Then, instead of classrooms that look like this (yes, these are the real classrooms), we’ll build a new classroom that looks similar to the one that we recently completed at a school nearby.
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Finally, even with 487 students, there is no playground of any kind. But children need to play! So, we’re going to build them one like this that we built two years ago at a yet another school, nearby.
The new playground will have two each of swing sets, teeter-totters, slides, and monkey bars.
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Final Word
The hard thing about improving the world isn’t technical. A latrine uses Babylonian-era technology: a structured hole in the ground to prevent people from walking in their own poop. A classroom uses Roman-era technology: cut stones placed carefully on top of each other (think of the Coliseum, or the aqueducts). A slide is an inclined plane; a swing, a pendulum.
And the barrier isn’t financial either. The ENTIRE cost of that Mega-project, above, is $65,000. That’s the water, the electricity, the latrines, the kitchen, the classroom, and the playground. It would cost at least 100 times that here.
So, what is the barrier?
It’s belief. Our belief that we—individually—can't actually make a difference. It’s our worry that our funds might be ill-stewarded, misused. It’s the lack of transparency regarding where the money goes. And so on.
Let’s dispel one lurking doubt.
TGUP has raised money from private foundations that cover all of our operating costs: literature; mail; website; travel; software subscriptions; professional services (CPAs, etc.). As a result, 100% of every dollar donated goes to the donor’s intended project. We don’t know of any other charity in the world that can say that, and demonstrate it.
What the world needs is a model that is demonstrably effective, transparent, where every dollar donated goes into real economic development, and where anybody can participate at whatever level they want. That is TGUP. It’s why we’re so confident we can change the world. We are.
Click here to see thumbnails of all of the 286 projects we’ve completed. And, click here to see the roster of projects still awaiting funding. Pick a project and help. You actually CAN change the world.
TGUP
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The Global Uplift Project
tgup.org
4164 Stanford Way
Livermore, CA 94550
100% of all donations are tax deductible
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