2023 Fundraising Campaign

Hello Echoers! We need your help!

We're launching our 2023 Fundraising Campaign for Esther's Echo and the Women in Action Development Program in Sierra Leone! Last year's campaign raised 10k dollars for the school - founded by our partner, Esther Kanu - and helped another 60 women graduate from school in one of the most difficult places in the world to live. Donation link is below! And be sure to check out the campaign because it has footage from this year's graduation ceremony made possible because of YOU!

EVERY dollar goes to the school. We keep nothing for overhead costs and any expenses that come as a result of the operation I cover personally.

Thank you so much to those who donated last year! Again, be sure to check out the campaign page which features videos of this year's graduation ceremony! You helped make that possible!

2023 GoFundMe Campaign for Esther's Echo

You can also donate, as always, through our website using the button below

Support the Women in Action!

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

4000 for 40 Fundraiser for 2021 School Kickoff!

Hello Echoers!

I'm turning 40 this month!

For my 40th birthday, I want to help make the world a better place and I need your help! I'm trying to raise "4000 for 40". We've launched a fundraiser on Facebook that hit 1700 dollars in the first day! Thanks to all of you who have already contributed!

For the last 10 years, we've been supporting my friend Esther Kanu in Sierra Leone who founded her own school for vulnerable women and girls in 1996 during the Sierra Leone Civil War. I met Esther when working overseas and we've been friends ever since. With your past donations, we've seen over 500 women graduate from the school during this last decade. This is one of the most recent graduation photos from this past Spring!

Graduating class at most recent Spring graduation. (Note that they do class years differently than in North America so their sashes say class of 2019 because that was the year they started not the year they are going to graduate)

We're heading into the Fall 2021 school season and rent is due on the building that is currently housing Esther's school. It's one annual payment which gets the school through another year of operation and frees them up to invest money earned by the school itself, through catering and tailoring contracts, back into school programs. We need to raise 5500USD total. I think we can do it.

Esther speaking at this past Spring's Graduation

If you know me through my other online work, you know that I'm typically posting online about space exploration. But ultimately, THIS is why I love talking about the cosmos so much – the perspective that space exploration brings when looking back at our own world. We all share this planet and its fate. The education of women is key in the fight against climate change, strengthens democracy, and ultimately improves the lives of fellow humans in one of the most difficult places in the world to live. Help me make this planet a bit better on my most recent orbit around the Sun.

Thank you all for your consideration and for your past donations. We are not a large community of donors and so EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU has – and IS – making a tremendous impact in another part of the world.

-Matthew

You can donate using the website donation form:

Donate Today!

Or to our ongoing Facebook Fundraiser:

It's Giving Tuesday!

Hello Echoers,

Today is Giving Tuesday and I'm writing in hopes that you'll help me support Esther Kanu and the Women in Action Development Project today. We have two ongoing fundraisers both on our website and on Facebook with donation buttons below. I also recorded a quick video (link below) to talk about our partnership with Esther and why I do what I do. Thank you for considering us today as I know you are being inundated with donation requests. Know that all of your support goes directly to Esther and her staff and students in Sierra Leone. With your help, over 400 students have graduated from Women in Action since 2012 when we founded Esther's Echo. Let's keep going!

-Matthew

Donate for Giving Tuesday!