School Fundraiser 2023

Dearest friends,

Christmas time is over and 2022 came to an end. On this occasion I wanted to wish you a happy new year and thank all of you, who were with me, at my side, and always backing me up, to celebrate life. And a huge thanks to all online and cash donations for my birthday fundraiser. I will be visiting the school this year for the first time and will do everything in my power to turn all of your donations into computers and educational material and deliver them to the school in person.

Let me take you with me on my journey to Madagascar, at least in pictures. Come and visit my school in Nosy Be, a place, so close to my heart, called Wings of Change, where I teach computer science to 60 students, as a volunteer teacher, since 2020.

With 60 students and unfortunately only 4 laptops in class, of which one is needed for zoom, while the remaining 3 are there for practice, it can be difficult at times. Check out this video and see for yourself what Albert, one of our highly ambitious students said during class: https://vimeo.com/783597525

You can check out the school’s website and some testimonials of our students here https://wingsofchange.co/testimonials/ in particular these 2 students enjoyed my class very much:

PROGRESS SO FAR:

For those of you who donated to this cause last year, we wanted to express our deepest gratitude, as thanks to you, we were able to collect around 6.000AED/€1.500. But we didn’t want to spend this money on 4-5 laptops, but actually come up with a proper plan to get 60 laptops for this amount.

So we did our research last year and we’re currently in the application process for a collaboration with a German NGO called Labdoo.org and once our school is granted the support, it will cost us only €10 per laptop, hence €600 for 60.

However, we will need to ship these laptops ourselves because Labdoo will only deliver them to a German address and then we’re responsible for the final shipping. Currently, the price for shipping 1 laptop of 2-3kg to Madagascar is approximately at €20-30 and the remaining €800 is just not enough for that. Also Labdoo.org will release the laptops in phases, hence we will ship in phases as well. With your kind donations we get one step closer to our finale goal of shipping the laptops to Nosy Be in different batches. One would ask, why don’t we buy laptops there? First because of the prices, corruption & security. It is unfavorable if people come to believe that the school has money because otherwise, we risk break-ins.

We’re deeply grateful for your kind donation and collaboration. We look forward to changing the world together.

Watch how the students show their gratitude here https://vimeo.com/783292345.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sanaz Hanke & Team