Dearest friends,

finally, it’s Christmas time and 2022 is coming to an end. On this occasion, I wanted to thank all of you, who were with me, at my side, and always backing me up, to celebrate life.

Thank you 2022 for the deep connections, splendid conversations, learning opportunities, new challenges and accomplishments, life and business lessons, personal and business growth,  friends and loved ones, who were there when needed but also respected boundaries, and above everything celebrated successes with us.

What an amazing support system to cherish and to hope for as well in 2023.

 

 

I want to take you on a journey to Madagascar. 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://1drv.ms/v/s!ArAW4_WIA80ZitsJMc7sbMKYWruoUQ?e=Gr44hB

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:
Christyzio is one of the many students and mentions his joy in minute 1:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ6hR-FBp6E
Yasmine is one of the female students and enjoys the class as well, as she puts it in minute 2:30:https://youtu.be/N5Eg2BqXs2g

 

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, while Madagascar was still closed anyway and we started a collaboration with a German NGO called Labdoo.org, which will be providing us with laptops for all students. We’re currently in the application process 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 around 20-30€, and 800€ won’t be enough to ship 60 laptops. One would ask, why don’t we buy laptops there? First because of the prices, corruption & security issues. It is better that local businesses and authorities don’t know that the school has money, otherwise, we risk break-ins. We are trying to find the best solution such as taking a bunch of laptops with us when we will visit the school this year and also shipping a few laptops via DHL to test the waters.

 

You can help us in many ways to achieve our goal:

  1. by donating once again to our cause and helping us cover the logistic through an online fundraising campaign at https://gofund.me/100c0ac4.
  2. if you plan to travel to Madagascar and our hotel in Nosy Be, you will not only support local tourism but maybe you can take a few laptops with you.
  3. if you know anybody who works in a global logistics company at C-level, maybe you could ask them if they have any CSR initiatives, to which we could directly apply by putting us in touch with the right person.

We have contacted UPS and will apply to the UPS foundation and will update you on this matter, as the best-case scenario which we are herewith manifesting, is to get the logistic costs covered and be able to spend the remaining funds on educational material, books, and food.

DONATION INFO:

We have set up an online crowdfunding campaign for your generous donations at https://gofund.me/100c0ac4

In return, everyone who donates is wholeheartedly invited to participate in one of the upcoming lessons on either January 3rd at 11 am (Gulf standard time/8 am CET) or any other lesson on Tuesdays at the same time. We invite you to watch and participate via zoom.

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

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Sanaz Hanke & team