Capilano University

Justice High and Buying Farmland

Hello Echoers!

Some exciting things in the works since my last post for International Women's Day. I was invited to speak at Capilano University's Justice High youth symposium. Esther's Echo has had a great relationship with Capilano U for 7 years now. In fact, if it weren't for Capilano's Global Stewarship Program championed by Cam Sylvester, we likely wouldn't exist. Global Stewardship sponsored Esther's journey to Canada in 2012 and inspired our initial founding as an organization that same year. In fact, we shot a mini-doc about our partnership with Capilano that year which you can watch below.

 The Global Stewardship Program - or Global Stew as it's known by the students (Stews) - enrolls 35 students per year who learn what it takes to become a global citizen. Courses range from international issues and management training with seminars delivered by leaders in the non-profit and social enterprise sectors. As part of their education, the Stews are challenged to organize their own symposiums for younger secondary school students. That's what Justice High is all about. The symposium invites high school students to explore issues addressed by the United Nation Millennium Development Goals. Last month I was invited to speak about Esther's Echo and our ongoing commitment to support Esther's school, The Women in Action Development Project, as well as how relatively small initiatives like ours can foster big changes around the world.  

Matt Speaking about Esther's Echo at Justice High

Matt Speaking about Esther's Echo at Justice High

One of the big changes we're hoping to accomplish by the start of May is to secure a plot of farmland for Esther. Thanks to donations that came in during International Women's Day, an honorarium from Capilano U for the Justice High presentation, and January's Action for Esther hosted by Mulgrave Secondary, we are SO CLOSE. Esther needs about 1500US more to purchase the farmland. This land will be a game changer for Women in Action as they will be able to sell produce as a form of income to help sustain the project. With all the donations, we are sitting at around 1400CDN which is just over 1000US. So we only need another 500US. I think we can do it! This is the one of the most important donations we've sent to Esther as we are helping to provide a whole new source of income for Women in Action. 

Thank you all so much again for your support. International Day for Women was our largest single fundraising day to date! This comes following our most successful Holiday Season ever! Huge thanks as well to Capilano University, the Global Stews, and Cam Sylvester. All of your support is vital to the continuation of women's education in one of the most challenging places of the world to live. Remember 100% of all your donation goes abroad. Now let's keep up the amazing effort and get Esther that farmland! 

Help Buy that Farmland!

And...we're live! New site is up!

Welcome to the new Esther's Echo website! We're trying out a new build after a long hiatus. Where did we go? 

Over the last two years, we took a break to reexamine how the organization was structured and was going to work. Esther's Echo first really started way back in 2005 when I first met Esther. Since that time, we have been running informal fundraising efforts for Esther and many donations just out of our own pockets to help her out. In 2009 we really started to think about the possibility of formalizing the project as an actual non-profit organization. 

We headed back to Africa to see Esther again in 2011 and started to collect footage of Esther's project. You can find some of that footage on YouTube. We spent a week in Sierra Leone with Esther and still have a lot more footage we are going to put together on this new site. 

In 2012, we got funding to bring Esther to Canada from Capilano University, She spent two weeks with us in British Columbia thanks to the Global Stewardship program at Cap U and our great friend, Cam Sylvester. She was able to deliver an inspiring presentation about her work before an audience of academics and students at Capilano. 

In 2013, Esther's Echo was finally registered as a Canadian Non-Profit organization. We began to think seriously about how we thought we would market ourselves had become outdated since 2009 when we had started talking about incorporating. So, over the course of 2013, we restructured, thought about rebranding and aimed to launch a brand new website in 2014. And, here we are. 

Now that we are online again, we hope to bring Esther the support that we always wanted to and provide you with a unique opportunity to be part of a very cool and effective project in a region of the world that truly needs it!

-Matthew