Blog #235: Challenge Grant to Project Alianza
The AllPeopleBeHappy foundation has awarded a 3-year (2023-2025) $100,000 Challenge Grant to Project Alianza for expansion into Guatemala training of local women as Community Educators. Specifically, Project Alianza will 1) partner with local organizations in Guatemala to co-sponsor and house community educators who will teach reading and writing foundational skills to children either during the school day working along regular schools or after school in tutoring sessions, and (2) infusing rural homes with literacy content by way of radio broadcasts and hands-on activities. The goal for the program is to hire, train, and deplore 3 Community Educators in year 1, and in years 2 and 3, deploy 27 more Community Educators. The hoped-for result is to improve the educational outcomes of 20,000 Guatemalan children through Community Educators and the radio programming.
Blog #234: Challenge Grant to Little Sisters Fund
The AllPeopleBeHappy foundation has awarded a 3-year (2023-2025) $60,000 Challenge Grant to Little Sisters Fund for “Teacher Training Academy (TTA),” working in Nepal. Since 2013, Little Sisters Fund (LSF) has been conducting teacher training workshops in child-centered teaching methodologies at Nepali schools. In this step-out project, LSF will be training new teachers at a set location, Niketan Secondary English School in Kathmandu. The program consists of two 3-month long workshops each year for 8 to 10 trainees each, led by lead educator Sangita Adhikara and 3 subject specific trainers. Each teacher-trainee will receive a monthly stipend and a certificate upon completion. The continuation of LSF’s in-school Basic Educator Training program, already impacted well over 100,000 students, coupled with the addition of the Teacher Training Academy will meaningfully influence the Nepali education system.
Blog #233: AllPeopleBeHappy 2022 Accomplishments
The AllPeopleBeHappy foundation conducts 5 programs. In 2022, we initiated our second Opportunity Project that we entitled “Solar for Tanzanian Clinics,” and provided solar powered electricity and clean water to the Kayanga Health Center and Rugu Health Clinic in Tanzania. We funded year 3 of our Challenge Grant to Green Empowerment for the installation of solar systems in rural health clinics in Uganda. We renewed 10 Project Grants to Little Sisters Fund, Sunflower Global, Indego Africa, Pangea Network, LifeNet International, Education Across Borders, Sunsar Maya, Project Alianza, Maji Safi Group, and Ugandan Water Project. We funded 4 new Project Grants to Into Your Hands Africa, Magpie Community Foundation, Global Emergency Care, and Tandana Foundation. Due to the Pandemic curtailing overseas travel, we did not award any Volunteer Service Award. We did award two Fellows grants, one to Katya Diaz Salcedo with Green Empowerment, and the other to Qaasim Ali with Collateral Repair Project.
Blog #232: In Memory of Barbara Steen Tang
Barbara Steen Tang, co-Founder and Executive Director of the AllPeopleBeHappy foundation, passed away on January 23, 2023, at the age of 72. Barbara was a true force for good in the world. As a mother, a spouse, a worker bee, and a lover of cats, she was kind and gentle to everyone she met. As a volunteer grief counselor for 17 years, she listened and helped many, many victims of tragedies. As a philanthropist, she was relentless, keeping in touch with multiple organizations through e-mails, phone calls, lunches, and meetings for 15 years. Her body of work made the world a better place and her legacy will live on in the countless lives she had such a positive impact on. She was truly “Building a World Where All People Can Be Happy,” one day at a time.
Blog #231: Opportunity Project - Solar for Tanzanian Clinics, Phase 1
In July of this year, the AllPeopleBeHappy foundation initiated a new Opportunity Project titled “Solar for Tanzanian Clinics”. In the Karagwe and Kyerwa districts of Tanzania, which have a combined population of 750,000 people, there are 2 hospitals, 6 health centers, and 69 health clinics. The health centers and clinics and all operating on low or zero degree of electrification, utilizing intermittent grid power or generators. After an initial survey by Mavuno Project and a needs assessment by the solar company OffGridBox, we decided that Phase 1 will be the solarization of the Kayanga Health Center (53 rooms) and the Rugu Clinic (25 rooms). The solar/clean-water equipment was shipped in from Italy and installed on-site in November. For Kayanga, we used three OffGridBox Mini 5-1200 (total 3 kWp, 3.6 kW inverter, 14.4 kWh batteries, 5L/sec ultrafiltration), and for Rugu, we used one Mini 5-500 (0.25 kWp, 0.5 W inverter, 1.2 kWh batteries, 5L/sec ultrafiltration). From now on, the up to 400,000 patients per year at Kayanga, and the up to 10,000 patients per year at Rugu will have 24/7 electricity and purified water for the foreseeable future.
Blog #230: Update on Project Grant to Maji Safi Group
A Project Grant of $10,000 was awarded to the Maji Safi Group in mid-2021 for its Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) Program in Rorya District, Tanzania. Maji Safi Group, ‘Clean Water Group’ in Swahili, was founded in 2013 to promote health and disease prevention in underserved and impoverished communities. The MHM program consists of utilizing school programs and school clubs to teach girls about MHM, distributing hygiene kits (disposable pads, washable pads, menstrual cups, soap, periodic panties), painting educational murals, broadcasting radio program, and conducting group discussions. For 2021-2022, the program was conducted in 3 secondary and 3 primary schools, impacting 350 students.
Blog #229: Project Grant to Sunsar Maya
Sunsar Maya is a small non-profit working in Nepal to improve the livelihoods of disadvantaged children and women through community-based services. They directly serve 220+ children and women in Mahalaxmi (Lalitpur) and Jorpati (Kathmandu). Three AllPeopleBeHappy Project Grants were awarded to Sunsar Maya in 2018 to 2021 for its SuMa Women’s Literacy Program. This program teaches 100+ women conversation and written English, Nepali, and mathematics. The English skills enable students to use communication devices, i.e., cell phones and computers which use English characters. By building the women’s literacy and numeracy skills in their native language, they are able to more easily manage daily tasks, such as shopping and paying bills, and perform life skills such as navigating government offices, using a bank account, and participating more fully in their communities. In 2022, we awarded a fourth Project Grant of $12,500 for teacher salary support (7 full time teachers and 5 part-time teachers) and the expansion of the literacy program to a third community center (Machhegaun).
Blog #228: Project Grant to Education Across Borders
A Project Grant of $14,000 has been awarded to Education Across Borders for a WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) initiative in the Dominican Republic. Education Across Borders’ mission is to create lasting solutions to extreme poverty in the most vulnerable communities in the Dominican Republic, including two bateyes, home to over 2,000 Haitian Dominicans living in deplorable conditions. The need for latrines in the bateyes is significant (currently only 1 in 5 families has access to sanitation), and clean drinking water is expensive and scarce. The first Project Grant in 2021 allowed for the building of 11 new composting latrines for 22 families, the repair of 15 latrines for 30 families, and the delivery of 100 water filters. This second Project Grant will build 10 new composting latrines, repair 17 latrines, purchase 50 water filters for new families, and deliver a second water storage container to 15 families.
BLOG #227: PROJECT GRANT TO MAGPIE FOUNDATION
The Magpie Community Foundation (MCF) is a group of organizers and Lakota elders committed to addressing the needs of the Oglala Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. Pine Ridge is one of the most impoverished Reservations in the country, with an unemployment rate of 80-90%. Many families have no electricity, telephone service, running water, or sewers and must use wood-burning stoves to heat their homes. Pine Ridge residents often need to travel up to two hours to reach a store with reasonably priced produce and other foodstuffs of decent quality. In 2016, MCF set up gardens on the Poor Bear family land east of Allen, SD and seasonally distributes the produce to area residents. In 2017, with the help of private funders, MCF was able to dig a well with a hand pump to irrigate the gardens and provide drinking water. A Project Grant of $10,000 has been awarded to MCF for the purchase and installation of a solar pump and drip irrigation system to support this indigenous food sovereignty initiative.
Blog #226: Project Grant to LifeNet International
A Project Grant of $10,000 has been awarded to LifeNet International to improve healthcare for 56,000 Burundian patients, including an estimated 1,800 mothers and babies at delivery. LifeNet International provides high-impact, capacity-building trainings in medical and management best practices in 336 health facilities in 6 African countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda. This Project Grant will provide healthcare providers at Ruzo Health Center in Burundi with trainings in medical/clinical practices (5 modules) and management best practices (4 modules) along with personal mentoring, access to digital tools, and need-based equipment and supplies. Healthcare providers will acquire evidence-based knowledge and skills helping them to reduce infections, correctly diagnose and treat disease, perform interventions for maternal and neonatal complications, and more.