The Pandemic of Forgotten Stories

If we don't get half our goal by May 1st, our team will have to stop the work, leaving 5 million pages in the dark! Help keep it up until it's self-sustaining.

We are Flying Over Time, an educational nonprofit teaching STREAM (Science, Technology Reading, Engineering, Art, and Math) by sharing stories, and we're raising $14k to save 5 million never-before-seen pages from the Burundi National Archives.

For $10, be remembered in our Mbuyu AI 3D space on our new 3D AI site: PRE.

For $20, get a Space free for 1 month. For $50, 3 months! For $200, a full 12 months!

The Existential Risk

A silent pandemic is unfolding, unnoticed and unaddressed. Our cultures are in danger, as memories, stories, and ancestral wisdom are vanishing forever. New technologies are making it worse. As younger generations pursue global opportunities in the digital age, they unknowingly leave oral histories behind. Their grandparents' voices are fading, and this ever-widening generational gap threatens to silence them permanently.

The Mission

Our diverse nonprofit team at Flying Over Time is very aware of this problem. Our mission is to stop this pandemic of memory erasure, preserve untold stories, and amplify the voices of native cultures. We document and share the stories that matter most – the ones that carry the essence of a people, their traditions, and their values.

Our Innovations

We're not just dreaming of a solution; we've already started. We just launched an easy app to help everyone digitize their brands, family histories, & cultural heritage. PRE - Preserving Records Everywhere, empowers users to preserve and share their stories in goggles-free 3D using AI-powered content and chats.

Urgent Need

Our first project on the PRE platform is Mbuyu, which supports a grassroots team of researchers in Burundi (ABADBU) to digitize the 5-million-page collection at the Burundi National Archives. They have imaged over 600,000 documents so far, one of the biggest digitized collections in African history. And it doesn't cost us much: $2,800 per month supports 10 people full-time, digitizing over 3,000 images per day. We've funded it from our pockets, getting into debt to keep it going. We're now 2 months behind! If we don't reach $7k by May 1st, our Burundi team will be forced to pause.

Fortunately, if we reach our goal, we can make the project self-sustaining and launch Mbuyu as an app on PRE, ready to copy it to 10 more countries, and all of PRE. Publishing the Archives opens them to subscriptions from researchers in AI, politics, economics, family history, health, education, linguistics, journalism, African studies, & demographics. Multiple organizations are already asking. Income will also show the government offices in charge of the archives that the records are valuable and worth funding long-term. Meanwhile, Burundians will be able to access it for free forever.

Our Thanks

Donors that help us launch the Burundi collection will receive our direct thanks and:

For $10, your name or message will be forever placed in one of our official 3D Spaces.

For $20, a coupon code for 1 month free on PRE.world to build a live 3D Space with AI.

For $50, a coupon code for 3 months of a free Premium Space on PRE.world.

For $100 or more, a coupon code for 12 months of a free Premium Space on PRE.world!

Take Action

Every day that passes, we lose more irreplaceable stories, more languages, and more pieces of our shared human tapestry. The time to act is NOW. Your support is crucial in helping us develop apps to upload and store offline documents safely and securely, creating a massive digital archive. The youth have access to tools, the elderly have access to knowledge. Together, we can stop the pandemic of forgotten stories. Together, we can heal the wounds of the past and build a more connected, more vibrant, and more diverse future. Stand with us in this critical moment, and let's save our ancestors' voices before it's too late.

Join the fight. Donate now. #SaveOurStories #PreserveWithPRE