New Graduation Class, New Fundraiser, New Podcast!

Hello Echoers!

I wanted to write and catch everybody up on a number of exciting things happening with Esther's Echo and the Women in Action Development Program.

1) This past Spring saw another graduating class at the Women in Action Development Program - our community partner in Sierra Leone founded by my friend Esther Kanu, a Sierra Leone local. This graduating class is from a new location where Women in Action relocated to this year. We are still assisting with the rent of this new location until we can find funding to build a permanent school for the staff and students of the Women in Action Development Program – our long term goal. But without your donations we wouldn't have been able to cover this past year's rent nor have funds to help relocate. Below is a photo of the 2024 class!

2024 Graduation Class of the Women in Action Development Project

2) We've launched a new GoFundMe fundraiser for the Holiday Season! The funds raised cover school building rent, teacher's pay, and teaching materials and equipment needed by the school. 100% of your donations go directly to the Women in Action Development Project. In addition, donations from these fundraisers have helped open a rural satellite location, purchase an income-generating plot of farmland, and now also help to build a drug rehabilitation centre. You can find the fundraiser by clicking here or the image below.

3) A new synthetic drug called Kush has swept Sierra Leone. A number of government and community level responses have started addressing growing rates of addiction. The drug is cheap to buy and has become widespread. Women in Action has begun its own rehabilitation program in concert with other local efforts. Continued support for the school also means continued response to the drug outbreak.

4) On the science fiction community engagement side, I have become co-host of a new podcast called the TREKtivism Podcast. I work as a science educator at a planetarium in Vancouver, Canada. This space science life often intersects with members of science fiction fandom. One of those science fiction fandoms is of a television show called Star Trek which depicts a future Earth free of disease, poverty, hunger, and war. Animating this community for real-world social change seemed logical (TREKtivism = Star Trek Activism) given the inspired view of a bright future. And so our podcast highlights members of the space and science fiction community ranging from human rights lawyers, researchers, organization founders, or celebrities running fundraisers for various causes. 2 years ago, this same community helped raise over 10,000 dollars for Esther's Echo.

Thank you all. We can't do this without your help. Because of your donations since founding Esther's Echo in 2013, over 600 women have graduated from Women in Action – improving lives in one of the most difficult places in the world to live. More updates to come! Thank you all so much again. 

-Matthew

I'm Speaking at TREKtalks2!

Hello Echoers!

Exciting happenings to share! First of all, our Star Trek community fundraiser for Esther's Echo was a huge success! In total, between online donations on GoFundMe, cheques I received, and donations through the Esther's Echo website we raised nearly $12,000CDN. Remarkable! This blows our previous fundraising years away. Not only did Star Trek fans come through for the fundraiser, but also cast and crew members of Star Trek who donated and showed public support on their social media channels! Look at all these posts!!

Screen caps of Star Trek cast/crew supporting the Esther’s Echo Star Trek community fundraiser

​With this funding, we've secured both Women in Action Development Project locations through until 2024. We will likely begin a new fundraising campaign this Summer and hopefully we can engage this community of donors again. Speaking of which! This Saturday January the 14th, I'm joining another “TREKtivism” (Star Trek Activism) panel as part of a day-long streaming telethon called TREKtalks2 hosted by the Trek Geeks podcast Network. The stream starts at 9:45am PT / 12:45pm ET! If you can't make it in person, the stream will be recorded and posted on YouTube. I'll be talking about how fandom can help catalyze social change including our very own Star Trek fundraiser for Esther's Echo. Look! I'm next to Commander Riker!

TREKtivism panel guests for TREKtalks2

You may recall TREKtalks1 from last year where I was also on a TREKtivism panel. This is the 4th TREKtivism panel I've been involved with – two online and two in person at the Chicago Star Trek Convention and then Vegas this past August. I'll be joined by Jonathan Frakes (Commander/Captain Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation), John Billingsley (Phlox on Star Trek: Enterprise), Armin Shimerman (Quark from Deep Space Nine), Kitty Swink who also starred on DS9 and is raising support for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and Heidi Roddenberry President of the Roddenberry foundation. The stream will feature many more Star Trek cast and crew all day so if you're a fan you definitely don't want to miss out. My panel is later toward the afternoon.

Star Trek helped raise me. Star Trek depicts a future where humanity has overcome poverty, war, injustice. Esther and her team are the ones really turning the gears on the ground for Esther's Echo. I've always recognized this. Where I saw I could be of support is in connecting her to a wider donor base – essentially “echoing” her work to other audiences. Star Trek is an audience I can connect to and so this pairing is something I've always really wanted to do. Space geeks for social change. And yes, while Star Trek takes place in space, it's really about empowering people and societies wherever we have the opportunity to - whether here on our planet or beyond.

Thank you all so much again! You're literally making dreams come to life for myself, Esther, and dozens of young women and girls overseas. See you on Saturday! 

FIND THE TREKtalks 2 stream at: TREKtalks – Trek Geeks Podcast Network

-In Wonder

-Matthew

Esther's Echo at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention

Hello Echoers!

The time has come! I’m currently at the Las Vegas Star Trek convention called the “56 Year Mission” celebrating the 56th anniversary of Trek.

Star Trek inspired me with its depiction of a bright future for our planet. In Star Trek we learned to live in harmony with the planet’s biosphere. We eliminated war, poverty, and hunger.

Esther’s Echo is a natural evolution of that inspiration. I wanted to help make the world a better place. I wasn’t sure how until I met Esther when I was working for another organization. Esther is a community leader who understands the struggles of Sierra Leone and its people so clearly. I thought about how much funding had been spent to put me, one foreign aid worker, in the field for a year and what that funding could have accomplished if given directly to Esther’s school - The Women in Action Development Project. The resources spent to put me in the field could have graduated 50 young women.

Esther has the expertise, but I thought perhaps I could help echo her work to new audiences. And one audience I know very well is Trekkies. There is huge social capital in the science-fiction / Star Trek fandom. What if we could engage that community to effect real-world social change? This meeting of worlds has always been a dream of mine. Star Trek helped inspire Esther’s Echo and now I get to introduce Esther’s Echo to Star Trek.

Today at 2pm PST - I’ll be on the “Roddenberry Stage” at the Star Trek convention to talk about “Trektivism” - fandom for social change. I’ll be joined by Star Trek actor Chase Masterson who founded an organization called the Pop Culture Hero Coalition as well as Star Trek actor John Billingsley who is on the board of the Hollywood Food Coalition. Each of us will be sharing how the fandom can help support our causes.

We’ve also launched a Star Trek community fundraiser that, even if you’re not a Star Trek fan, you can contribute to! Like all our fundraisers, 100% of the proceeds go directly to the Women in Action Development Project. We just hit the $4000 dollar mark! We need 10k in total.

You can find the link to the fundraiser here

Send good vibes my way at 2pm, everybody! And if you’re here at the convention, be sure to come to the talk! Look at this beautiful stage!

Roddenberry Interactive Stage

2022 Graduation and More "Trektivism"

Hello Echoers!

We've had a busy Spring and I have some exciting news for the Summer as well.

Spring first:

Because of all of your support, another class of students graduated from the Women in Action Development Project. I love seeing graduation videos and knowing that we all helped to make this happen. Esther sent me videos of this year's graduation ceremony. I have included some below with an additional video from Esther that we used at a special awareness raising event in Chicago this past April. More on Chicago in a moment, but first I really just wanted to say thank you all so much again for another successful year which included the "4000 for 40" fundraiser for my 40th birthday in August 2021. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of your donations. I often feel I cannot thank you all enough.

What was going on in Chicago? Mission Chicago is a Star Trek convention I attended to host a panel discussion called "Trektivism”an in-person version of the virtual panel I hosted last January mentioned in a previous blog update. As some of you likely already know, my other life is in science education where I work at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre Planetarium and the Trottier Observatory here in Vancouver. Science Fiction has been a huge inspiration in my life. Shows like Star Trek depicted a brighter future of equity, justice, and where humanity's needs were met allowing us to thrive.

​The Mission Chicago Trektivism Panel Poster

Many fans of Star Trek attribute the show as to why they pursued sciences/engineering and indeed the show inspired my love of science and science education – but I also felt inspired to make this world seem more like that bright future. Esther's Echo is my way of contributing. While Esther's Echo itself has no direct connection to science fiction, I believe I can engage the science fiction community in supporting social causes such as ours. The "Trektivism" panel is a way to engage that community. The term “Trektivism” itself was coined by the TrekGeeks podcast network where I host a podcast and have been able to help champion the “Trektivism” cause, encouraging sci-fi fans to focus their fandom toward real-world social change.

At the panel in Chicago, I was joined by several Star Trek actors and fans on stage who have all championed various social causes. I showcased Esther's Women in Action school with a video of her explaining the program and the most recent graduation ceremony (note that graduating classes are named after their start year rather than their graduating year in Sierra Leone).

Trektivism Panel Selfie! L to R Noah Averbach-Katz, Chase Masterson, Randy Frank, Me (Matthew Cimone), Heather Rae, Jen Usellis, 

​I'll be speaking about Esther's Echo again in Las Vegas this month at another Star Trek convention. This time we'll also be running an online fundraiser to coincide with the talk beginning this week and culminating at the convention itself. We will keep you all posted on fundraiser and of course would be sincerely grateful for any donations.

Thank you all so much again for your support of Esther's vision and for helping people thrive in one of the most difficult places in the world to live. Here is that graduation video!

And here is the original virtual Trektivism Panel I hosted if you want to check it out!

And check out my friend’s organizations/projects featured at the “Trektivism” panel as well!

Noah Averback-Katz and T1 International supporting Insulin Access

Chase Masterson’s Pop Culture Hero Coalition an anti-bullying organization

Randy Frank with Lambda Quadrant promoting Queer representation in the Geek Space

Jen Usellis the Klingon Pop Warrior

Heather Rae’s project “Fans Give Back”

International Women's Day

Donate for IWD 2020!

Hey Echoers!

It’s International Women’s Day!

When women are educated, the decisions they make have a ripple effect and can help break the cycle of generational poverty. Women who receive more education “tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn higher incomes, have fewer children, marry at a later age, and enable better health care and education for their children,” according to the World Bank.

I read the above in a Global Citizen article this morning on International Women’s Day. If there is one way to break poverty’s back in a place like Sierra Leone, it’s education. I already knew that heading to Sierra Leone for the first time as an undergraduate student. What I didn’t know is that the global efforts against poverty wouldn’t just come packaged by the branding of the largest international organizations and governments but by the organizing of women in their own communities. If that sounds ignorant - it was. I was a young white male working for an international aid organization. Meeting Esther, a local woman who ratified her community to lift young women, girls, and children out of poverty with no international assistance completely changed my worldview of what was possible with grassroots organization. That’s why, when I returned home, I wasn’t interested in only supporting large non-profits, but ensuring that financial support made it to the front lines directly - women doing the work within their own spaces and communities.

On International Women’s Day, of course my thoughts are going to be with Esther and the school. And I’m asking you to give your thoughts to them today too. I cite something frequently - the number of students whom have graduated since our formal partnership with Esther in 2012 - approximately 400. But Esther has been leading a fight against poverty since 1996. Thousands of women have been touched by her work. It’s a tough time right now in Sierra Leone. Right after our expansion to a second location, the Sierra Leone economy was hit hard and we are working to ensure the teachers are paid and the doors stay open. Contracts the school normally undertakes for catering services have shrunk considerably and they are relying on us to make up the shortfall. On International Women’s Day, please consider Esther and the Women in Action Development Project as a way to break the cycle of poverty around the world.

-Matthew

Donate for International Women's Day 2020

By the way, was your school ever this lively in the mornings!?