I'm Charlie, the guy behind this.("This" being the idea and the web page encouraging you to honor the girls with a donation to help build a school. I'm not a part of Building Tomorrow, who actually coordinates the building of schools in Uganda.)
To those who have shared the link, thank you so much. To those of you skeptical about the motives / approach? Thank you for thinking hard about things like this. There's a lot of darkness in the world, especially with this situation. I'm grateful to all of you hoping and working to make it better.
Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll hopefully be able to answer them quickly.
Half of our country is Muslim. Our biggest national unity issues break down across sectarian as well as regional lines. The area in question is in the North. The population there is primarily Muslim, and locals are generally unsatisfied with government services, making it tough as you can imagine to get any kind of public support for the kind of prolonged campaign required to rout out terrorists living in communities of civilians. Such a thing would place much stress on the already volatile state of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. Further, militants can cross porous borders to hide if need be. And it is a big country too, Nigeria is twice the size of California. So anyone with the idea that the solution is to send out men with guns handle this situation is not being realistic. This is not to defend the government's response or lack thereof, rather it is just to point out that a reductionist understanding of the situation is not a useful one, from the perspective of these girls.
Now as much as I hate people talking about "Africa" like it is one country, this is the right kind of pressure. Not too long ago the world would not have cared about a bunch of missing African girls. Now they do, and it is making us look bad. Nigerians are already pressuring the government to take action, and the increasing international outrage can only add to that pressure.
Basically things didn't go so well.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/06/10/127750586/how-fore... http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/30/131705055/the-tues... http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/21/185801589/episode-...
Later
After reading the thread, I'm convinced this shouldn't be on the front page of HN, and flagged it.
This is obviously a drastic over-simplification too, but trying to characterize the political and historical complexities of the region in a few lines seems pretty futile. My point is that while I applaud the sentiment and even the clever copywriting and fundraising pitch, this is utterly unresponsive to the problem at hand, and I'm not sure that it can be solved by well-meaning outsiders.
The action suggested is building schools in a totally different country.
That demonstrate in a very morbid way the inability of good people in the first world to help people in the rest of the world, without getting up from their chair.
I would love to hear any ideas you have that will help the girls in Nigeria. Not being sarcastic there. Would really love to hear them.
In the meantime, keep in mind that it isn't a zero-sum game. Helping kids in Uganda to get a solid education is far from the "saddest thing" about this.
This is the only way.
I wish there were fewer negligibly informed people shouting about those things and more people doing (probably) positive things like this.
In fact, I'm very open to other ideas for usefully offering support / solidarity / funding, rather than demanding Saving Private Ryan style military incursions.
Not the point I know, but from what I have read that translation seems pretty suspect. And even if it were accurate, I'm not sure why it's particularly relevant.
As for your question about the translation, I am not an expert either, but there is an entire section of the relevant Wikipedia article about the etymology of the name:
"In the town of Maiduguri, where the group was formed, the residents dubbed it Boko Haram. The term "Boko Haram" comes from the Hausa word boko figuratively meaning "western education" (often said to be literally "alphabet", from English "book", but the Hausa expert Paul Newman says it derives from a Hausa word with meanings such as "fraud" and "inauthenticity")[35][36] and the Arabic word haram figuratively meaning "sin" (literally, "forbidden").[37][38][39][40] Loosely translated, the name could mean "western education is sinful", which might symbolizes its strong opposition to anything Western, which it sees as corrupting Muslims.[41] However, this interpretation of the name is disputed.[42] Locals who speak the Hausa language are also unsure what it actually means.[43]"
It doesn't answer why they only targeted girls, though. Unless it was a girls-only school.
EDIT: To be specific: The name “Western education is sinful.” says nothing about why they only targeted girls. This group's history and background might suggest their motivation, but here, in this subthread, only the exact name (or rather, translation) was under question as a possible explanation for their motive.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2...
Article: I mean, it actually pretty much does... but umm... language is complicated?
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The author cannot think of a way to help the children of Nigeria, so he is just trying to make something good come out of this situation.
Patriarchy™Absolutely. Anything you can donate will go to help build a school. Thank you so much for considering it.
And for those of you who can't donate — I totally understand! It'd be great if you could help get the word out about it, though!
Just click the email link, and change the amount in the subject line to whatever you want. You get an email back from Square with instructions on how to complete the transfer.
Or donate via PayPal at http://www.buildingtomorrow.org/donate/ if you're more comfortable with that.
Your skepticism is great. Happily, Building Tomorrow has a great track-record, and has made being transparent one of their core principles. You can read more about it here: http://www.buildingtomorrow.org/zeta/about-us/transparency/
You can also check out third parties who've reviewed them, http://givinglibrary.org/organizations/building-tomorrow and http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/56-2614329/building-t...
Thanks!
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