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

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!

Reopening Women in Action in a COVID World

Students with masks at the Women in Action reopening

Dear Echoers, 

Over the last few months, as in many parts of the world, Sierra Leone was put on lockdown due to COVID-19. The Sierra Leone medical infrastructure had a total of 9 ventilators available. So restricting public gathering and business was really important. While we provide funding to Esther's school, the Women in Action Development Project, the school itself raises funds by taking on catering and tailoring contracts which was not possible over the lockdown. As a result, with the school reopening for the Fall school season, it is facing a shortage of rent which we are trying to bridge. Rent is due this month which covers us for the next year. 

We've gone through a similar situation before during the Ebola Outbreak in 2014. And this community got us through. So we're calling on your support again. The school needs a total of 6,000 USD. We've currently raised about 3,500 CDN between online donations through our website and our currently active Facebook Fundraiser which closes on Monday Sept 14th.   

As a reminder of what you're helping to support, here is an overview from Esther herself. We asked Esther to record a short video about her work that was shown during the presentation I gave for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada earlier this Summer. Here is the clip she shared with us. YOU ALL help make this possible!

Donate

April Graduation, Giving Tuesday, COVID-19, and The Roddenberry Foundation

Dear Echoers,

I’m cramming a bunch of updates into one e-mail as I know you’re likely all receiving so much traffic from everybody right now and I didn’t want to contribute (more than necessary) to the flood of your inboxes.

First off, a big thank you to those who contributed to our fundraiser this past February and March. Great News! With your support, we saw the Women in Action Development Project through another academic year resulting in a new graduating class of 41 students! That puts the total graduates from Women in Action that we’ve been able to directly contribute to since our founding at nearly 500! Again, this wouldn’t be possible without your support. These graduates go on to beat national averages for unemployment, homelessness, and in light of Earth Day this week, are also contributing to environmental sustainability. As we spoke about during the Climate March, the education of women and girls is one of the top ten ways of decreasing global carbon emissions.

Project Drawdown CO2 Reduction Solutions by Rank

Unfortunately, a few COVID-19 cases have been reported in Sierra Leone so formal graduation ceremony will not be happening this year. Thankfully, classes were open long enough for students to complete course work before quarantining began and had a small celebration on the last day of classes. I was sent a video that’s below. This is the last day of classes from the NEW LOCATION in Port Loko that was opened last year. However, a quarantine will impact the school’s other income generating activities. As in other parts of the world, businesses are closed or restricted meaning that the school will not be able to take on catering or tailoring contracts as it normally does. Considering the impact by COVID-19 to non-profit organizations, a new global Giving Tuesday has been set for May 5th, in addition to the traditional November Giving Tuesday, and we are asking for contributions. You can check out our Giving Tuesday Partner Profile page here https://givingtuesday.ca/partners/esthers-echo

That said, I know SO MANY organizations and causes are poking at you right now and many of us (myself included) have been laid off or had their income security impacted by the virus. However, I can say that despite the pandemic, none of this funding is going to overhead costs or self-maintenance. As always, all our donations go directly to Esther, her staff, and the students of the Women in Action Development Project. There is currently a coalition of large Canadian non-profits asking for funding to maintain their headquarters of operation. Part of the advantage of being a smaller grass-roots initiative is that Esther’s Echo itself can weather these kinds of challenges more easily because of our very low overhead costs. Women in Action cannot and so that’s why we ensure 100% of your funds go overseas. Any costs to our own operation I cover personally.

Lastly, an exciting initiative we recently undertook was to apply again to this year’s Roddenberry Foundation Prize. The Roddenberry Foundation is the vision of Rod Roddenberry – son of Gene Roddenberry who created the sci-fi show Star Trek. The Foundation funds organizations whose work helps to usher in the future depicted in Star Trek. Future Earth in Star Trek has eradicated poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness; an idyllic world where people are free to be their best selves. As a young person with their head in the stars, I’d always hoped to explore space one day. When I realized that wasn’t possible, I thought if perhaps I couldn’t explore UP then maybe I could explore OUT, which is how I ended up in Africa to begin with. And, like the crew of the starship Enterprise in Star Trek, I wanted to leave the places I explored better than I found them. That is how Esther’s Echo came to be. The Roddenberry prize is an epic $250,000. Most organizations that qualify have budgets in excess of a million dollars – far beyond where we are at. So, our odds are not stellar, however I believe the process helps to put us on the Foundation’s radar and gives me an opportunity to clarify our purpose and intent each time. The application for the Roddenberry Prize asks a series of questions about your organization. I have posted our answers online so you can read them. They are in a subsequent blog post here.

Thank you all again for your donations through the Esther’s Echo website, to me in person, and to our fundraisers on Facebook. Remember Giving Tuesday is May 5th!

Sincerely

Matthew