What do you give to a woman who has everything? How about something on behalf of those with nothing?
With your help, Tonic and Eliza Dushku have raised $30,420 for THARCE-Gulu, a new nonprofit helping former child soldiers and others affected by war in Uganda. It was co-founded by her mother, Judy Dushku, a college professor in Boston.
This was Dushku’s 30/30/30 goal — to raise $30,000 by her 30th birthday on Dec. 30. She hit her target just after midnight on the 30th.
“Not a lot of people know what or where Gulu, Uganda is,” an exuberant Dushku told Tonic. “I certainly didn’t. And now to see it almost trending, this is amazing. This has been the most celebrated birthday of my life but it hasn’t been about me.”
The campaign was truly a global effort. A total of 976 donors contributed an average of just $31 apiece, proving that when we work together, small acts of kindness can have giant results. Dushku said she was touched by a supporter in Australia who was selling her ducks to support the effort, and another young woman who sold some of her school books so that she could contribute.
“Social media can be the most selfish place that we find ourselves. It can be an ego-trap,” Dushku said. “But it seemed like the exact opposite this past week.” She loved sharing the journey through Twitter. “It really did feel like it was our cause. It really started to feel like this magnet that was drawing more and more people together.”
Thanks to this fund-raising drive, THARCE-Gulu will be able to buy the land and the zoning rights to build a Trauma Healing and Reflection Center. The planned complex will have studios for art therapy and film classes, as well as job training and day care centers.
“This money will cover the land, title, lawyer and architect. Given that beautiful gift, we’ll be able to go over this spring and I anticipate that we can start much earlier than expected,” Judy Dushku told Tonic.
She and Eliza have been thinking of doing this since a trip to Uganda in summer 2009, when Eliza and her boyfriend Rick Fox accompanied Judy’s student group. While there, they met former child soldiers who were trying to reintegrate into society and young women who had been held captive during the war and were now in school.
THARCE-Gulu began its trauma-healing work last summer, and will continue it in summer 2011. “We started some of our programs in rented and donated space,” Judy said. “All of these different projects need to be brought under one center where we also have some staff to monitor the participants’ progress.” In the center, which Judy anticipates will begin construction in the spring and open next fall, Ugandans will be able to recover and grow through a variety of mediums, including music, art, film and sports, for starters. They’ll also move toward self-sufficiency by learning how to use computers, how to market crafts and more.
Judy tells the story of a young Ugandan woman named Lucy whom she and Eliza met in Gulu in 2009. Lucy already had one child who had been born in the bush and she was pregnant again. She was broken. When Judy saw her again this year, Lucy was holding the accounting book she used to keep track of orders for her women’s craft collective. She sends emails when orders go out. She is no longer just a victim. Soon, there will be lots more like her.
Photo 1 courtesy of THARCE-Gulu, photo 2 via TwitPic.