I don't know if there is a specific reason, but I would be a little wary of donating to this without at least cursorily checking out the organisation involved. Unfortunately aid money sometimes ends up having minimal or negative impacts.
> Boko Haram, whose name literally (yes, literally) means “Western education is sinful.”
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.
It's extremely relevant. It answers the most basic question about the tragedy: motive. This wasn't an isolated incident committed by a rogue individual. It was done by an organized militant terrorist organization, whose primary goal is to establish Islamic Sharia law through terrorism.
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's extremely relevant. It answers the most basic question about the tragedy: motive.
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.
The point at which an HN thread includes a direct evocation of "Islamic Sharia law", as if that string of tokens was by itself sufficient to inform the general HN reader of the context of any issue, is the point at which we can probably include the whole thread wasn't well suited to HN.
It is relevant because it speaks to Boko Haram's ideology. Are they anti-Western culture? Or are they particularly excited about issues involving children, such as education? This group previously worked hard to stop vaccinations in the North (of Nigeria) as well.
Some fundraising campaigns aim for large numbers of small donations, others focus on getting a few people to make bigger donations. It's not either/or. Both are good.
You don't have to give $276, you could give $27.6 or even $2.76. I think he was just targeting that amount, since it sounds nice and likely his target audience can afford it. Also I think Kickstarter/Indiegogo would be a bad fit for this -- not only does this organization already have a donation page already set up, but they also would receive a lot less money from making a campaign for that. Lastly, you aren't going to be getting a reward for contributing.
Yes, it's just a suggested donation to the Building Tomorrow charity, you can donate whatever you want.
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.
My understanding is that fundraising appeals are in general not welcome on HN; not because they're unworthy, but because they'll crowd out other things.
The problem is that every fundraising appeal comes bundled with people who believe it's worth making an exception for. There's a whole big wide Internet out there; HN doesn't need to be all things to all people, and it's probably not a good idea to adopt an informal standard of which issues are important enough to exploit HN as a channel for attention.
Later
After reading the thread, I'm convinced this shouldn't be on the front page of HN, and flagged it.
the saddest thing is that the action suggested in this article is not even about saving those girls, or protecting other girls, or punishing/dismantling the terrorist organization who did this.
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.
I would say the most effective thing would be to use the internet and social media to raise awareness, thus forcing western governments to get involved. Not knowing where you are paying taxes, I can assume you probably contribute money and legitimacy to some armed forces who can fight this terrorist organization.
> the saddest thing is that the action suggested in this article is not even about saving those girls, or protecting other girls, or punishing/dismantling the terrorist organization who did this.
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.
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.
I apologize for being picky, but the problem here doesn't seem to be the lack of schools for girls in Nigeria; the problem seems to be heavily armed religious reactionaries attacking those schools and kidnapping the students while the Nigerian government sits on its hands.
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.
Hello all. I am a Nigerian citizen. Allow me to add some perspective.
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.
52 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadWhy not raise 12.50*number of girls being sold=Max 3450$
And return them to their parents ?
Way cheaper than a new school where more girls will get raped!
PS: this post is meant as sarcasm. I know you can't just go on Amazon and buy these girls.
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-...
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!
https://twitter.com/charliepark/status/464784408630013952
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.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2...
Article: I mean, it actually pretty much does... but umm... language is complicated?
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]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram#Etymology
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.
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.
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.
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!
Later
After reading the thread, I'm convinced this shouldn't be on the front page of HN, and flagged it.
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.
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.
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.
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.