Help Eric buy a ticket to study in Sweden

Eric Wanjamah is well-known in the Omidyar.net community for his reports on South Sudan where he volunteered to help train teachers and assist in development work. He is a university-educated social worker who is working at present as a probation officer in Kenya.

He now has the opportunity to study for a Master's degree in Social Work after being offered a full scholarship by Goteborg University (http://www.socwork.gu.se/english /)

All he requires is some help towards the cost of his air ticket there. He needs to raise US $1,200. And he needs it soon - his course begins in August, 2007.

I've been having technical problems trying to get all my text to show.

This is a trial post - I hope it will undo the problems I've managed to create when opening this new thread and will now allow people to add comments.

Fingers crossed....

Also, Eric would fly KLM...so it anyone has KLM miles they can dontate that would be great too.

I highly recommend supporting Eric in this endeavor. He and I have been in constant contact since Eric joined O'Net, and I have been consistenly surprised by his genuineness, persistence, creativity and hard work, to name a few assets. You can read his lengthy and detailed messages about the goals and results of his philanthropical trips to Sudan here:

http://www.omidyar.net/user/u686 114690/news/7/?searchterm=wanjam ah#top

and here: http://www.omidyar.net/user/u686 114690/news/12/?min_score=-9999& amp;show=1&page=1

You can see that his English is also excellent.

Eric, can you tell us how a master's degree in social work can help you help others more? I have a masters in social work and it lets me do a lot here in the states that I could never do without it.

Will you need to speak Swedish?

Thanks Barbara,

A master's degree will greatly enhance my effectiveness as a Social Worker practising in the contemporary Kenyan society. My short term objective is to gain skills in psychology, child development and counselling. The Bachelor's degree that I hold is very general and I wish to narrow down to a concentration in family and child therapy. I hope to be able to practice Social work in a precise manner and guided by an international base of knowledge. Specifically, I would like to apply the knowledge that I'll gain in my probation practice which mainly focus on youthful offenders.

Ultimately, my desire is to be involved in the development of the Social work career here in Kenya. Currently, there is no institution in the country offering a Masters in Social work. I see myself in the field of teaching and research in the next 15 years.

I believe that Social workers are needed in Kenya more that ever before. As the refugee situation in Sudan and Somali escalates and the social problems in Kenya increase due to urbanization...helpers will be needed.

The admission I have gained is to pursue an International Master of Science in Social Work, the course will be delivered in English for a period of 9 months.

I appeal to well wishers to help me achieve this big dream.

David,

I noticed the donation goes to your pay-pal account. Are you a non-profit and can we receive a tax-deductable donation?

I'd really love to take the tax write off and have my tax dollars go to Eric vs bombs in Iraq.

If not, I'm wondering if a group of O.netters would consider workign with International Humannity Center to set up a project with them, so we could benifit from tax-deductable donations.

I would be willing to sit on such a committee but do not have time to chair such a committee right now. Anyone else willing to do so?

I would like to note that although I cannot support others with financial contributions, I could support people with attention.

In this vein, I feel it would be useful if Eric could write a short article about "the significance of the qualifications as a social worker in the context of information about volunteering [and/or volunteer work] in Africa". This might be useful for him to focus on anyways, and I could then publish the article with links to Eric's homepage on a "volunteering information" website.

I do not know if that would immediately help Eric (within the next week or two), but I could imagine that it would help him to make more new contacts in in maybe a month or two (or three)....

No, Julie. I'm afraid not. I'm not a non-profit or registered charity.

I simply set up the dropcash at Eric's request.

If you, or anyone else, can set up a dropcash for tax deductible donations towards Eric's air fare - and can do this soon - just let me know. I can then return donations to anyone who wishes, so that they can re-donate tax-deductibly.

We have very little time. The only useful function of a committee that I can see, so far as Eric is concerned, would be a pooling of ideas about how we can raise the profile of this appeal and get lots more donations.

Why can't we do this here on this thread? We could also use a workspace here if we wanted to keep track of any concerted efforts we decided to make.

What do you think, Julie? Can you get a tax-deductible dropcash set up? We have about six weeks at the most to raise the money.

I was also impressed by Eric's commitment to sharing his skills and would like to help with a small donation to his latest venture. I hope others are also able to support him.

Good luck Eric.

WE would need to contact International Humanities Center and as I mentioned I don't have time to take the lead on this right now. Youth Helping Youth Inc (our non-profit) is in the middle of structing the Peace Park contracts so I can't ask our board to do anything more right now.

Wonder if the idea fits unders some of the other non-profit affiliations already set up here at O.net. Doesn't Mark have a non-profit entity that helps Life in Africa out from time to time?

Good luck Eric, I am happy to help in the small way I can. You will do great things!

Eric could contact IHC and skype with Steve Sugarman. Steve's email is steve@ihcenter.org to get the ball rolling. I think it takes about 4 weeks to go through the application process and Steve has offered his support to O.netters.

Eric, I would reccommend setting up a group that works to support educational scholarships for o.netters. Something very specific and easy to administer.

I believe Jean Russell is the chair of the conference scholarship committee. She might be interested helping out.

IHC will need an American contact to distribute international funds. I'm willing to be on the advisory board of such a group if someone else takes the lead.

Eric does this interest you?

You might also send a PM to Steve Sugarman here at O.net asking how we set up such a group and if it is possible to do so immediately and how long it will take. I know other O.net projects have gotten immediate approval for participating in some of the O.net cash give aways.

By setting up the non-profit it's possible that O.NET might consider matching funds raised for the purpose of O.NET scholarships. THey have a history of supporting this type of thing. So, it's possible that by raising funds to send Eric to school, funds also get raised to support O.netters to get to Onet events.

I'd also re-name the thread to read, "Help Eric go to college"

Help ERIC go to Goteborg University for a Masters degree in Social Work - Airfare needed from Africa to Sweden

Thanks for the suggestions, Julie.

I think the idea of scholarship fund to support O.net members is a good one, but expecting Eric to be instrumental in setting it up seems a little unreasonable in view of his tight schedule now.

What we need for Eric - and that is what this thread is about - is to raise as much money as we can from as many Onetters as we can, as quickly as we can. Perhaps you overlooked the time line involved: Eric's course starts in Sweden in August. Well-meaning advice to start setting up a tax-deductible donation route now will already too late, particularly if you say it takes about a month to go through the application process.

I think Eric would be helped much more by a concerted effort now rather than in a month's time, when it will only be a matter of days before he has to fly out.

That why I said we need " to raise as much money as we can from as many Onetters as we can, as quickly as we can."

If, Julie, you could motivate every member of Emerging Futures Network to donate $5 or $10, we would immediately have between $420 or $840 extra to add to the $90 already donated. (I've added myself in - what better reason to join EFN!) Then with between $510 and $930 towards our $1200 target, perhaps might find someone willing to match what we have raised or to make up the difference.

Perhaps ON would offer support if they were to see so many O.net members wanting to help Eric.

Eric is a talented person with a great future ahead of him. Anyone who has been around here for more than a few days will know what an important contribution he has already made to Onet.

In return, wouldn't it good if fellow Onetters could make something good happen for Eric! Especially, since by doing so, it should lead to good things happening in Kenya for future trainee social workers there, as well as for the people who those trainee social workers will then be able to go on and assist.

This might be a good place to post links to some of the good things on Onet that Eric has contributed to:

I suggest one link per person, so how about this great thread for starters? (I'll leave Nairobi, Sudan and Gulu for someone else to do)

My suggestion is:

What made my heart skip a beat

Thank you Eric for your warm PM I received today from you. Let me know how it goes with contacting Steve and do use my name as someone who is willing to be on the advisory board as a US contact. Also be sure to share your time frame and that you are already raising funds here at O.net. I know he works with several O.netters.

My intuition is that by developing such a resource for the O.net community at large there will be a larger buy in to contributing not only for you but for others in the future.

This type of resource fits with the Emerging Futures Network vision which is to develop an evolving infrastructure to support the visions of individuals and organizations to uplift humanity and heal nature.

For more information about Emerging Futures Network folks can check out our Emerging Futures Network:

• Blog: http://www.emergingfutures.net
• Wiki: http://www.emergingfutures.net/w
• O.NET group: http://www.omidyar.net/group/efn /

The Emerging Futures Network team has been very busy identifying a plan for using the $15,000 community award received this April from O.net. One of the ideas is to provide support to our Network Weavers Network

I mention this because the Network Weavers Network is looking at how they can develop tools, widgets, meet-ups, etc to support other Network Weavers.

It sounds like Eric is a Network Weaver in Kenya, here at O.net and soon to be in Sweden.

It would be more appropriate for me (personally not as EFN) to send a PM to the EFN list if it included how our request benifited the development of evolving infrastructure that can benifit O.net scholarships now (as in Eric) and in the future (to benifit others).

Please keep me informed.

It would be more appropriate for me (personally not as EFN) to send a PM to the EFN list if it included how our request benifited the development of evolving infrastructure that can benifit O.net scholarships now (as in Eric) and in the future (to benifit others).

That's the kind of thing I had in mind, Julie!

Excellent!

What's the deadline on this? Deadlines can help drive people to action.

Eric told me that his plan is to leave for Sweden on 23rd August since classes begin on 29th.

So I think we should aim to raise the money by the end of July. We need suggestions of how we might do that.

Also, I've been wondering what options there might be for Eric to obtain a loan for any shortfall on his airfare requirements at that time.

Any ideas?

Eric sent me a very good article -- I posted it more/less just as he wrote it (with some minor changes, e.g. formatting) at http://volunteerism.info/ -- if anyone has additional ideas, please post here and/or PM either Eric or myself.

:) nmw

Norbert, I would suggest you get rid of the centering format on the text of the material. It makes it very difficult to read.

I promise I will make a donation to this but I need to get a deposit into my bank account in the US where I can pay with Paypal. I would guess I can get that off next week sometime.

If you send the check directly to David or Eric you won't need to pay the Pay Pal fee.