2021: Year in Review
Dear Supporters of Uyghur NextGen,
Happy New Year! I am writing to you from Istanbul where I have been visiting our primary development projects: Palwan Youth Empowerment Center and Palwan Boxing Club. Yesterday, we hosted the center’s first open house for prospective students and both the turnout and enthusiasm exceeded expectations. The students were most excited about helping design some of the center’s programs and having the chance to engage in the skill-building process in a way they’ve never been able to before. Thanks to all of your support and the incredible leadership of the project leader, Samarjan Saidi, both projects have gotten off to a stellar start.
As we enter this new year, the Uyghur NextGen team would like to take some time to reflect on all the progress we have made together this past year. In less than 9 months we have gone from a small group of impassioned individuals to an organization providing tangible support to the Uyghur diaspora. None of this would have been possible without your amazing generosity and support. Summarized below are some of the major milestones we achieved in 2021.
Began Operations and Received 501(c)(3) Status
In March, our group of like-minded American youth formalized its efforts to support the Uyghur community by creating the Uyghur NextGen Project. We set out to raise funds and awareness in the United States and sponsor Uyghur-run development projects without the same overhead cost of existing charities. Our mission was and continues to be to provide tangible support for Uyghur diaspora youth while preserving Uyghur culture and language for future generations. In June, Uyghur NextGen received its formal 501(c)(3) non-profit status from the IRS allowing us to wholeheartedly pursue that mission.
Race day in Washington Crossing Park, New Jersey.
2nd Annual Uyghur Endurance Challenge
On August 28th, we hosted our primary fundraiser the 2nd Annual Uyghur Endurance Challenge in Washington Crossing Park, New Jersey. Over 50 runners from across the United States came together to run/walk as many miles as possible within 24 hours. The racers ran the 4 mile course loop over and over through mud and rain. Despite these adverse conditions, the race went off without a hitch. David Crane won the 2021 Challenge after covering exactly 100 miles within the allotted period. Isabella Crane won the Female category with 73 miles and Isabella de la Houssaye won the Masters category with 50 miles. In total, the challenge’s participants ran a cumulative 1,518 miles.
Thanks to all of you the race was also a huge fundraising success. Collectively, participants raised $41,454 during the challenge. Axel de Boissard was the 2021 fundraising champion with over $4,900 individually raised for the Uyghur diaspora. These funds represent over 90% of our fundraising for 2021 and have been essential to our efforts on the Palwan Project. We would like to thank our race sponsors, the Malark Foundation, Greg’s Landscaping, and the Ali Family for helping make the challenge such a success.
We look forward to racing again next August in New Jersey and hope all of you will join us!
Oliver with some of the Palwan team members and students on site in Istanbul.
Launched Support for first Major Development Project
In June 2021, we provided our first pilot grant to support the launch of Palwan Youth Empowerment Center. The project is located in Istanbul, Turkey, one of the few places in the world where the Uyghur diaspora is able to still live without threat of harassment or deportation. The Palwan project is providing a wide range of free academic courses (English, Math, Coding, University Prep) along with mental health and leadership mentor programs for at-risk Uyghur youth. The project manager and everyone else involved are all Uyghur.
After completion of the project’s planning phase, we expanded our fiscal and operational support for Palwan in August. We received further good news when the U.S. State Department through its Mission to Turkey Grants Program agreed to join as a co-sponsor of Palwan. The embassy’s funding and oversight will help ensure the project’s success.
In September, the team in Istanbul signed a lease for classroom space and began renovations. They have nearly finished these renovations despite challenges stemming from Turkey’s currency crisis. Almost all of the work has been done by the Palwan team themself with help from the students. We are looking forward to the formal opening of the center and the launch of its entire suite of programs this January.
These have been major milestones for us as an organization and we look forward to achieving so much in the coming year. As Uyghur NextGen enters 2022, we would like to reaffirm our core principles: transparency and efficiency. We started this organization because we believed the international community and particularly more Americans needed to stand up in the face of systematic ethnic and religious persecution. But we also made a promise to ourselves that we would not formalize our efforts unless we could do so in a cost-effective way. Because of this, none of our U.S.-based team takes a salary and we instead rely on the tireless efforts of our volunteers to keep us running. We will continue to uphold these principles in the coming year and hope to achieve tangible progress for Uyghur youth.
Thank you and Happy New Year.
Oliver Crane
Head of Operations
