The Acts of Kindness Fund & Learning Program

When we created this appeal, it was to help address the needs of some of the projects that we support and to also demonstrate the impact of small donor gives. The focus of this report is to provide an update on several projects and share some of our next steps.

For the past 12-months, BBS spearheaded a school garden project at NY DINA College in rural Madagascar.  The objectives of this project were to create gardens to produce a variety of fruits and vegetables for student lunches,  provide a “hands-on” experience for the students to learn new agriculture techniques, and be an important revenue stream for NY DINA College.  As a new source of revenue, we've helped ensure the stability of the school’s operations and for an important shift to occur away from the school's founder as the primary source of funding. Through this fund, BBS received donations for the purchase of gardening tools such as shovels and hoes which the school has now acquired. We have now wrapped up the work and the teachers have taken over the gardens continued development along with the students.  A team of local agronomists will continue to play a role by acting as a resource to share best practices in water management, crop rotation, etc.

In July, BBS shipped much needed teacher resource workbooks to Sserinya Primary School in Uganda.  The resource books are for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and grade one teachers and provide a range of exercises and activities that will support early education such as sounding out letters, numbers and counting.  The teachers will be able to re-use the materials and resources for future classes. These resources along with English/French dictionaries have arrived in Uganda’s capital. We anticipate they’ll arrive in the village in the next couple of weeks as a postal service truck is only dispatched to this region when they have a full truck of items to deliver. The materials will arrive in ample time for the teachers to review and plan lessons for the upcoming autumn term. This fund supported the purchase of the resources and when the shipment arrives the headmaster will take photos for us to share with everyone via a short update and on our social media platforms.

The other update we wish to provide is from the Thai Child Development Foundation (TCDF) and their on-going need for oxygen tanks for the children that need extensive physical therapy. TCDF’s school and medical support program is closed because of the current COVID wave the country is experiencing.  The lockdown it is anticipated to last until the beginning of September and it is the hope of TCDF that they’ll be able to welcome the children back in the autumn and resume their school operations. When they reopen, the team there will send new photos for us to share. 

This week, BBS updated the project page for this fund to reflect some new priorities that organisations are in need of support to receive.  This includes: 

1. Funding internet costs at the Heart of Asia Society.  This Kabul based think tank is involved in the peace building process in Afghanistan.  They currently have several projects running which have operational costs and if we can support their internet costs this will free up their resources at a critical time.
2. Teachers’ salaries at Sserinya  Primary School.  The current lockdown in Uganda has meant a cutback of government funding and as a result there is an ask for help to pay for teacher salaries, which equates in US dollars to 65.00 a month.
3. Mobility for Africa continues to expand their work to more rural e-mobility sites in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.  Their focus right now is on continuing to develop their lithium battery technology.

Moving forward, we will continue to update this project page to reflect new needs from a diverse range of projects that we support and may be of interest to individuals. The other benefit of our update strategy is that we believe this is a great way to build awareness for impactful work being done on a grassroots level through some very difficult times.

We wish to extend our deepest thanks to everyone that has supported this fund and we look forward to sharing with all of you what's next!

This BBS project is all about the power of small dollar donor levels and the impact they make on non-profits and their constituents.  In this report, we’re pleased to share what we’ve been able to accomplish because of your shared belief in small acts of kindness.

The first update is regarding the delivery of books to a small primary school in a village in rural Uganda.  Gumdrop Books, a small education book publisher in Canada, kindly donated books to the Sserinya Primary School to support the children's English language education.  The books are a much-needed donation because of a lack of resources at the school and through the Small Acts of Kindness Fund, we were able to quickly get the books into the hands of the children!

Several donations have also been made for the NY DINA College's purchase of gardening tools for their vegetable gardens in Madagascar.  Having the proper tools made the planting process efficient and will make the on-going maintenance much easier.  These gardens are now providing nutritious lunches for the students, valuable skills development and are a new revenue stream for the school through the sale of surplus vegetables in the local markets.

Our third update is on the webinar series for the non-profits that BBS supports globally.  These non-profits identified their top professional and personal development needs and one of the topics consistently asked for was stress management techniques.  Like so many others, the global pandemic has seen many non-profits trying to do more with less funding, balancing multiple hats within the organisation plus in many cases being the only source of support in the small communities where they work.  To address this request, on February 25^th a mindfulness webinar was facilitated by the firm Bearapy, who kindly donated their time, and our fund supported the technology cost for the platform used to deliver the session. The overall seminar feedback was excellent, and everyone found the tools and techniques practical and immediately applicable to their own situation.

Finally, several donations have been made for the Vale do Javari region of Brazil and the indigenous people that call that area home.  Unfortunately, the current COVID situation in Brazil means the teams must wait to return to the region but as soon as any timeline updates are available, we will communicate them immediately via a short project report.

In closing, we wish to say we’re truly grateful for the donations we've received and to be able to share how your support is having a huge impact on children, families and communities in some very remote regions of the world.

Thank you again!

Links:

• A Review of the BBS Non-Profit Causes Network
• About Our Mindfulness Partner Bearapy