The Tandana Foundation collaborates with communities in Mali’s Bandiagara District on initiatives that address community priorities.  In late 2020, the AllPeopleBeHappy foundation awarded a Project Grant of $9,477 to the Tandana Foundation for the creation of two school gardens, at the secondary school of Ondogou and the primary school of Saredina, Mali.  These gardens permit students to earn income with which they can purchase school and first aid supplies, enrich educational experience, and provide nutrition to the students.  The Tandana Foundation help the students elected management committees to lead their garden efforts, train these committees along with teachers and parent representatives, install fences to protect the gardens from livestock, and purchase seeds, fruit tree seedlings, and tools to get the gardens started.

Saha Global works in Ghana to set up entrepreneurial women with a chlorinating business that provides clean water to the public at a price that all can afford.  During the pandemic, Saha Global initiated the Coronavirus Emergency Water Fund (EWF) and provided free clean water to the villagers.  From June 1, 2020 to January 31, 2021, the EWF ran in 225 villages, with approximately 100,000 residents served and almost 600 participating women entrepreneurs.  Their latest data show that 1) over 8 million liters of water were treated, 2) recent round of water testing showed 100% of the businesses tested were free of E. coli, and 3) households consumed 6X the amount of water each day during this period than they did in in 2019.  With the ending of EWF on March 31, 2021, the main question to be answered is “How many customers are “sticky”? After receiving Saha water for free for 6 months , will customers be willing to pay for it again?”

In late 2020, we awarded a Project Grant to a long-time partner, Village Health Works (VHW); this time to support its food security strengthening program.  From November 2020 through January 2021, VHW has continued to develop its strategic approach towards scaling on-site food services to meet the anticipated 15% increase in patients seen on campus with the opening of the Women’s Health Pavilion in the second half of 2021.  VHW’s plans are to build on its established model farmer program to establish a local food procurement system that can not only provide adequate quantities of food for all patients but also create market access for the surrounding small-holder farmers.  In anticipation for season B, the 8 hectares of land on-site is being prepped to sow.  With bean seeds already available from the previous harvest, they are at the start of the purchasing process for the additional seeds that have been forecasted to meet the needs of the patient population.

Emergency medical doctors are in short supply in Uganda, Global Emergency Care (GEC) since 2007 has been training nurses to be Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs) to enable many more patients to receive emergency medical care.  In 2019, Global Emergency Care began the process of transitioning management of the ECP training and education program to local partners.  This involves transitioning full management of the ECP Diploma program to Mbarara University of Science & Technology (MUST), and transitioning oversight of the ECP workforce to graduates of the new Master of Medicine Residency Program for Ugandan Emergency Physicians.  In January of 2021, 4 emergency care practitioner students at Masaka Hospital have finished classes, completed their exams, and are awaiting the beginning of their final semester of training.  Three Masters of Emergency Care students graduated and were retained at MUST to support the management of the ECP training and management and advocacy of emergency care in Uganda. Talks have begun for the opening of an emergency department at Kisoro Hospital in Masaka.

In 2020, LifeNet International (LN) was awarded a $10,000 Project Grant from the AllPeopleBeHappy foundation to create deep, permanent change in a health facility in the Burundian district of Bugendana.  Over the course of one year, LN is providing high-impact, capacity-building monthly trainings in medical and management best practices.  A quarterly report explains: “Thank you for your generous support of the Bugendana Clinic…Your compassion enabled more than 2,100 patient visits to be improved over the past three months…we are grateful for the privilege of equipping Bugendana Clinic with the resources they need to provide high-quality, compassionate care to their community.  Even in the face of COVID-19, the staff of Bugendana has the privilege of welcoming new life into the world.  This last quarter, 129 new babies were born under the care of skilled women and men who had received LifeNet training.”

2020 was certainly a terrible year for the global community.  In this 2021 inaugural blog, we first sum up the activities of the AllPeopleBeHappy foundation for the past year, and then look forward to a brighter new year.  In 2020, we did not grant any Volunteer Service Award due to the restrictions on overseas travel.  We awarded four Fellows Program grants to in-country recipients working in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jordan, and Uganda.  We were able to install solar energy packages in 36 more rural primary schools in Tanzania, and we funded the first year of a Challenge Grant to Green Empowerment for solar energy systems in health clinics in Uganda.  Despite the Pandemic, most of the organization we worked with were able to carry on with their program after making modifications to conform with pandemic requirements.  We renewed 7 Project Grants and awarded 6 new ones.  There is no doubt that 2020 was a backward step in reducing Global Poverty, however the Foundation remains committed to “Building A World Where All People Can Be Happy.”

In the past year, Gonal Fransua Charle has been an AllPeopleBeHappy foundation Fellows Program award recipient working with Education Across Borders in the Dominican Republic.  As the Academic Mentor and EAB Program Coordinator, Gonal has been helping 7 university students to complete their course work and obtain their bachelor’s degrees under Educations Across Borders’s University Scholarship Program.  Under the High School Scholarship Program, Gonal has been working to strengthen the performance of high school students through group and individual meetings, as well as visits to high schools to better monitor each student individually.  This past year he has assisted and supported more than 50 students at all levels to master a subject matter or to navigate a difficult situation.

Over the past two years, Julio Louis has been an AllPeopleBeHappy foundation Fellows Program award recipient working with Yspaniola in the Dominican Republic.  As the Director of Operations of the Batey Libertad Education Center, his main tasks have been to 1) help the children of Haitian immigrants born in the Dominican Republic to obtain their identification documents to legally reside in the country, 2) recruit and support the students of the University Scholarship Program, strengthening and overseeing the program, 3) lead the Experiential and Service-Learning Program, welcoming to the community many groups, ranging from smaller groups of just six visitors, up to a group of 50 individuals from Yale University Alumni Service Corps, and 4) serve as a bridge between the community and the organization for the planning and development of community projects.

Sunsar Maya is a small non-profit working in Nepal to improve the livelihoods of disadvantaged children and women through community-based services.  They directly serve 185 children and women in Mahalaxmi (Lalitpur) and Jorpati (Kathmandu).  Two AllPeopleBeHappy  Project Grants were awarded to Sunsar Maya in 2018 and 2019 for its SuMa Women’s Literacy Program.  This program teaches 100+ women conversation and written English, Nepali, and mathematics.  The English skills enable students to use communication devices, i.e., cell phones and computers which use English characters.  By building the women’s literacy and numeracy skills in their native language, they are able to more easily manage daily tasks, such as shopping and paying bills, and perform life skills such as navigating government offices, using a bank account, and participating more fully in their communities.  In 2020, due to Covid-19, a third Project Grant has been awarded to support SuMa Women’s Literacy Program switching from daily tutoring to a once a month workshop format.

Seasonal migration of coffee farm families exposes children to fragmented education and child labor.  Since 2015, Project Alianza has been building schools and providing educational programs and scholarships for children growing up in rural coffee farming communities.  The AllPeopleBeHappy foundation has just awarded a second $10,000 grant to Project Alianza to support its Community Allies Program (CAP), which trains local women to teach literacy, hygiene, gender equity, and environmental conservation to 1,600 children in 25 schools in Nicaragua and El Salvador.  The funding will be vital in covering the costs of distance literacy learning materials for children, community educator stipends, equipment for remote training, as well as toothbrushes and soap, which is essential especially during this pandemic.