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Why We're Donating $6,500,000

2019-10-22 · announcement · John · 8:43 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development · mode: Advocacy & fundraising · tags: fundraising ask, civic or action cta, heavy topic

Formerly titled Giving Away $6,500,000.

John announces that the brothers' families will donate $6.5 million over five years to Partners In Health Sierra Leone; through community health worker Ruth and Sierra Leone's maternal and child mortality emergency he argues for systemic, long-term health-system strengthening in Kono, and asks viewers to donate and to pay attention.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The families' $6.5 million, five-year donation to PIH Sierra Leone

  • ★★★ John announces that over the next five years the brothers' families are donating $6.5 million to Partners In Health Sierra Leone. — 00:00:01 · Partners In Health, Sierra Leone

00:00:09 — Ruth, a PIH community health worker: her patients, her HIV survival, her $2 gift to a patient

  • ★★ In Sierra Leone earlier this year (2019) John spent a day with Ruth, a PIH community health worker who makes house calls to people with serious illnesses like tuberculosis or HIV. — 00:00:09 · Sierra Leone, Partners In Health, tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says Sierra Leone has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world: one in 17 women there will die in pregnancy or childbirth. — 00:00:29 · Sierra Leone, maternal death
  • ★★ John says Ruth's education was interrupted by the civil war (1991-2002); she contracted HIV and nearly died before antiretroviral therapy let her recover and find a job with PIH. — 00:00:43 · Partners In Health
  • ★★ John says Ruth earns a living wage by local standards but is far from well off, yet he saw her slip the equivalent of $2 to a patient, a mother struggling to feed her kids. — 00:01:05 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★★ John stresses that Ruth's $2 gift required far more sacrifice and compassion than his family's donation does. — 00:01:33
  • ★★ John says they talk about the gift publicly to draw attention to health workers like Ruth, who need more robust systems to address the maternal and child mortality crises. — 00:01:44 · maternal death, child mortality

00:01:57 — The maternal and child mortality emergency, why mothers die, and why the solution must be systemic

  • ★★★ John says 10 percent of Sierra Leonean children do not live to see their fifth birthday. — 00:02:00 · child mortality, Sierra Leone
  • ★★★ John says 3,000 women in Sierra Leone will die in pregnancy or childbirth this year (2019). — 00:02:04 · maternal death, Sierra Leone
  • ★★ John says the women die of hemorrhaging any well-stocked hospital could address, and because there is no electricity for night deliveries or blood refrigeration, and no running water. — 00:02:10 · maternal death
  • ★★ John says needing a C-section in Sierra Leone is often life-threatening: there is usually no ambulance, so a woman's best chance is a long ride on the back of a motorbike. — 00:02:33 · Sierra Leone · also in: Babies. Babies. Babies.
  • ★★★ John says this is an emergency, but because it has unfolded over many years it receives little attention. — 00:02:55 · maternal death

  • ★★★ John says the solution is not simple: not ambulances or clean water or electricity or more health workers, but all of them and much else; systemic long-term problems demand systemic long-term solutions. — 00:03:03

    “Systemic, long-term problems demand systemic, long-term solutions.”

00:03:21 — PIH's plan with the Ministry of Health in Kono and the brothers' long-term commitment

  • ★★ John says that, working with PIH over the last 10 years, the community has seen its success helping build health care systems in impoverished communities from Haiti to Rwanda. — 00:03:21 · Partners In Health, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ John says PIH and the Sierra Leonean Ministry of Health are crafting a plan to strengthen every facet of the health system, starting in Kono: far more community health workers and stronger primary care centres. — 00:03:32 · Partners In Health, Sierra Leone
  • ★★ John says the plan includes building and supporting a Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital, with a NICU, more C-section operating rooms and a teaching hospital. — 00:03:54 · Maternal Center of Excellence, Koidu Government Hospital
  • ★★ John says 96 percent of PIH Sierra Leone's employees are Sierra Leonean, and he has seen what they accomplish even with extremely limited resources. — 00:04:11 · Partners In Health, Sierra Leone
  • ★★★ John says he and Hank are not experts, but learning from experts taught them that lasting change happens best through deep, ongoing, lasting partnerships, hence a long-term commitment of money and attention. — 00:04:24 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John says they are committed to following the project's successes and challenges over the next five years and beyond, through video, photo and audio updates and interviews with Sierra Leonean health workers. — 00:04:43 · Sierra Leone

00:04:56 — Why Sierra Leone: the Ministry, PIH's ties in Kono, the epicentre of maternal death

  • ★★ Answering 'Why Sierra Leone?', John says the Ministry of Health is committed to systemic change and PIH's deep connections in Kono let it help make that change. — 00:05:04 · Partners In Health, Sierra Leone
  • ★★★ John says that by locating the project in the world's epicentre of maternal death, PIH hopes to show that radically reducing maternal mortality in poor communities is a global imperative, not a pipe dream. — 00:05:13 · Partners In Health, maternal death
  • ★★ John says that just as PIH led the charge on treating HIV and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, it aims to show that strengthening health systems in poor communities is possible, necessary and replicable. — 00:05:26 · Partners In Health

00:05:44 — The money: $25 million needed, the matching fund, the ask to donate, and why it is unacceptable

  • ★★★ John says about $25 million is needed over five years; with their $6.5 million and several big PIH donations they are over halfway, but still need a little over a million dollars a year. — 00:05:44 · Partners In Health
  • ★★ John says generous Nerdfighters have built a matching fund of $120,000 per year, so every dollar donated is matched up to that amount, and thanks the matching donors. — 00:06:13 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ John asks viewers to donate $5 or $10 a month or more at pih.org/hankandjohn, saying it will make a huge difference. — 00:06:25 · Partners In Health
  • ★★ John says PIH is known for efficiency and effectiveness, and Ruth's donation showed him how much a few dollars can mean in Kono. — 00:06:36 · Partners In Health
  • ★★ John says donations have lasting impact because when mothers don't die in childbirth, their children are more likely to go to school and live healthy lives and less likely to be malnourished. — 00:06:45 · maternal death
  • ★ John often thinks of what would have happened without Ruth's access to antiretroviral therapy: children robbed of a mother and a community robbed of a committed advocate. — 00:06:57
  • ★★★ John says it is unacceptable that thousands of women will die in childbirth in Sierra Leone this year (2019) and thousands more of treatable illnesses, and we don't have to accept it. — 00:07:13 · maternal death, tuberculosis, Sierra Leone

00:07:36 — The ask for attention: we only address the injustices we see

  • ★★★ John also asks for viewers' attention, the most valuable commodity: even without donating, paying attention to the structural challenges of poverty matters because we only address the injustices we see. — 00:07:36

    “we only address the injustices we see”

00:08:04 — Sign-off, thanks, the matching-team ask and a promise to answer comments

  • ★ In a P.S. John thanks Andrew, John, Ruth and Dr. Barrie at PIH, Niki Hua and Rosianna Halse Rojas, the Life's Library community and the matching donors. — 00:08:06 · Rosianna Halse Rojas, Partners In Health
  • ★★ John asks people able to donate $2,000 or more who want to join the matching team to email him at sparksflyup@gmail.com. — 00:08:24
  • ★★ John says he will be in the comments to answer viewers' questions. — 00:08:34

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says the $6.5 million donation is made by John, Katherine, Sarah and Hank, and that donations are now matched by a Nerdfighteria matching fund. — video description · Katherine Green, Sarah Urist Green, Hank Green, Partners In Health
  • ★★ In a comment John asks viewers who want to help to share the video on social media or with people who might donate, since sharing helps the algorithm. — creator comment
  • ★★ In a comment John says the donation is independent of the money Life's Library, DFTBA and others give to charity, which is not changing. — creator comment · DFTBA Records
  • ★★ In a comment John says the Project for Awesome will not change, at least this year (2019): it keeps raising unrestricted funds for groups like PIH and Save the Children; they want, if possible, to fund this project separately, but whether they can without the P4A remains to be seen. — creator comment · Project for Awesome, Partners In Health, Save the Children
  • ★★ In a comment John says they are extremely privileged to make such a donation, that this is weird, and that they should not be praised for doing what anyone in such privilege would do. — creator comment
  • ★★ In a comment John recommends three books to start on global health: An Introduction to Global Health Delivery, Mountains Beyond Mountains and Paul Farmer's The Uses of Haiti. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: maternal death · Partners In Health · Ruth · Sierra Leone

Also: People: Sarah Urist Green

Organizations: Koidu Government Hospital · Maternal Center of Excellence · Ministry of Health and Sanitation (Sierra Leone)

Concepts: antiretroviral therapy · Caesarean section · child mortality · community health worker · HIV/AIDS · living wage · systems thinking · tuberculosis · typhoid fever

Places: Haiti · Kono District · Rwanda

Events: Sierra Leone Civil War

Only in the description or credits: An Introduction to Global Health Delivery · Bailor Barrie · DFTBA Records · Katherine Green · Life's Library · Mountains Beyond Mountains · Paul Farmer · Project for Awesome · Rosianna Halse Rojas · Save the Children · social privilege · The Uses of Haiti

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