The Team Dayā school in Nguiddine Keur Sara in the Fatick region of Senegal is complete! Previously operating from two temporary classrooms made from millet stalks, sticks, leaves and cardboard, the community’s 100+ first, second and third graders now enjoy a proper, permanent school building.

Waly Gueye is the father of four boys and four girls, who all attend Nguindine Keur Sara’s primary school. He has expressed that he does not want his kids to experience the same problems he encountered which resulted from his lack of formal education.

“I never had peace of mind when my children attended classes in the temporary shelter because of the dangers that were there. The classrooms were very dangerous because of the scorpions, plus there was no door so the cows and donkeys would often roam around inside. The heat and the wind would also make them sick,” he revealed.

Fatou Gueye, age nine, is one of Mr. Gueye’s daughters. Her favorite subject is math and she would like to become a teacher when she is older. She is very happy with the new classrooms and their beautiful desks, blackboards, and cement floor. Before the construction of the new school block, Fatou was not motivated to attend classes due to the frustrating conditions.

“The dust in the old school made me cough a lot,” recalls Fatou.

Fatou and her dad are very grateful for the gift that Team Dayā and its non-profit partner buildOn have brought to their community. On behalf of the whole community they would like to thank Team Dayā for changing the children of Nguindine Keur Sara’s lives forever.

The Build

After the school groundbreaking in March, building continued though May. The students were able to move in and enjoy their new school at the end of their year before their summer recess of July, August and September. The school has two classrooms as well as a separate structure with a girls and boys latrine.

True Collaboration

Team Dayā and its non-profit partner buildOn built this school alongside the community of Nguindine Keur Sara. The community contributed the land and natural resources such as sand, water, and gravel to the project. A Project Leadership Committee consisting of six men and six women from Nguindine Keur Sara were selected to oversee the school build.

“Being the only woman who knows how to read and write in this community makes me feel that education is the key for opportunity – that education is the key that opens any door in this world,” said one of the women on the Project Leadership Committee via a translator during the school groundbreaking in March.

These incredible leaders not only helped to collect supplies, they also organized crews to volunteer on the worksite each day. By the end of the project, the men and women of Nguindine Keur Sara had proudly contributed 1,340 volunteer work days to the building of their new school.

More reading:

A thank you from Chief Khokhan Nolong.

Michael “The Bricklayer” Benedek on Building (hopefully) the First of Many Schools.

Please consider a donation so Team Dayā can continue its work. Three Ways You Can Help:

1. Make a Donation Online
   • Example investment opportunities:
     • $100 Five shovels for excavating the school’s solid foundation
     • $250 All the nails, nuts, and bolts to build a roof for the school
     • $500 In-country mason during the entire construction of the school
     • $1,000 Paint for a school
     • $40,000+ Fund an entire school
2. Spread the Word
   • Share our mission with your friends, your company and your industry
   • Invite us to speak about our mission to your network
   • Follow us on our website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
3. Join the Team & Travel on a School Build
   • If you have a combination of fundraising chops, an adventurous spirit and the belief each of us has the capacity to be Building Change, get in touch with us and have a conversation.

Thanks again for your continued support,

All of us at Team Dayā

by Team Dayā Member Michael Benedek

The flight to Senegal for a Team Dayā school build with Jay Sears & Hasan Arik was a short flight at the end of a long journey that began years ago when I read about Jay Sears’ vision to give back and launch a charity— Team Dayā–backed by corporate and individual donors from the adtech / martech world to build schools in the developing world.

It Seemed Far Fetched

The vision spoke to me at the time but it seemed so theoretical and far-fetched—- how would I and others like me do something like that?  I was focused elsewhere–my work at Datonics, my family, my co-op board, and my involvement as a co-sponsor (the less important one) in launching a charter school in Manhattan–a well-intentioned project that ended up getting rejected by the State of NY’s bureaucratic, charter-granting body despite numerous meetings with state and local representatives, community board meetings, and more.

Education & My Family

The importance of equal access to education has always been top of mind for me. My grandparents, who had their later school-age years stolen from them, never attended college but made up for it with street smarts and ensured that their children, who grew up in Canada, went to college.

My father arrived in Canada as a teenager from Romania, speaking neither English nor French, but graduated with a PhD in engineering from McGill University about 10 years later.  My mother studied French in college & worked as a teacher in her early years; my wife taught in progressive schools in New York City & now runs a middle school in Manhattan; and my own company Datonics has played a leadership role with a charity called Futures and Options for many years–providing gifted and talented high school students from historically underrepresented communities with the opportunity to intern with and work for technology / financial services companies in New York City–opening students’ eyes to opportunities they might not have been aware of.  Education is and always will be part of my DNA.

Team Dayā 

When I read Jordan Mitchell’s heartwarming post about Team Dayā’s Nepal school build  and his sentiment that “I’m not sure I will ever find the words to describe the experience (and I tear up when I try), but I hope that everyone I know has a similar experience at some point in their lives ”, I knew this was something I had to do.

LUMA Meeting

A bit before COVID-19 hit, I saw that Luma Partners was hosting a Team Dayā info session in New York led by Jay Sears.  I put that in my calendar, but work got in the way and I did not attend.  But I remembered meeting Jay at IAB Leadership Summit in Palm Springs a couple years prior and getting a great vibe, so I gave him a call and gave him my best pitch about why he should accept me as part of his team and let me get involved. 

Thankfully, he accepted me, telling me “Welcome aboard— as soon as you raise $10,000 you can go on a school build.”  And off to the races I went, during COVID-19, benefiting from generous corporate/personal donations from old friends, new friends, family, and from Datonics’ own adtech giveback initiative with agencies and brands that helped me reach our goal–but how were we going to build a school during COVID-19 in developing countries where most are unvaccinated?  The school build was inching closer but still seemed so far away!

Senegal Quick

In January 2022 I get a call from Jay–“Mike, our school building partner, buildOn, told me we may be able to build a school in Senegal starting in mid-March–are you in?  I want to get this done ASAP to build momentum and make up for lost time due to COVID-19–so that we can then do the next builds in Malawi & Guatemala.”  This is a man with a vision–he was planning for Senegal to get done as a path to the next two!  I loved it and said, “Let’s do it!”.

Only two months later, after countless vaccinations, multiple COVID tests & the promise of 2-3 tests more before we arrived to & during our time in the village–we met at JFK on a Friday night for our flight to Dakar.

Senegal Welcome

Three days later, after receiving our names in Wolof (mine was “DIEN GAI”) along with valuable language/cultural instruction, we arrived in the community of Nguiddine Keur Sara in the Fatick region of Senegal accompanied by two translators, and were met by galloping horses, pick-up trucks with cheering children, and a parade of dancing women and children. There were drums & local dance moves, and a ceremony in honor of the school groundbreaking. The whole community (I would estimate 200+ adults, with 150+ children were at this celebration) then signed a covenant to build the school with us, and we delivered speeches of thanks in response to their speeches of welcome and thanks, putting the first shovels in alongside the Village chief, village imam, and women leaders. 

Our Days in Nguiddine Keur Sara Village

Over the rest of the week, we connected deeply with members of the community–a community without electricity or running water. We slept on the floor in a grain shed adjacent to their homes under a mosquito net (normally we would have stayed in their homes but to protect them from COVID-19, we stayed in the grain shed), walked through their fields, played soccer with their children (and I even taught them how to play some card games), danced to Senegalese music, and worked hand in hand with them, day in and day out, for five hours per day in 109 degree heat.

Days started with stretching and that led to brick-making, cement mixing, digging the foundations of the school and the latrines, and more. Like Jordan experienced in Nepal, we wore work gloves and earned blisters, while the community worked with their bare hands (with no blisters)!

Each afternoon we spent on cultural exchanges–meeting the Village Chief and elders, meeting the representatives of the women, meeting the principal & teachers, learning how to prepare millet, learning how to build a chicken coop, tame a bull, and just hanging out with the kids and their animals–donkeys, sheep, chickens, roosters.

What’s Next

My takeaways were like what Jordan experienced in Nepal. First, WOMEN RULE!!!!–the Senegalese women, dressed to kill, often with babies hanging from their arms (and breasts), outworked the men–mixing and carrying cement, rallying the men to work longer and harder, and dancing at the work site.   

The second key takeaway was–something that should be obvious to all–that money and material things do not bring happiness (though your donations do help build a school!). This community had very few things, yet they had everything they needed and were very happy. The only thing they lacked easy access to was “education”–with their kids walking 5 miles to school in some cases, and in other cases having classes in a thatched hut.

When it was time to say our goodbyes, the whole community again came together to dance and sing, and we all shed many tears that will bind us together forever. The world is a small place and while I arrived to give, I received far more in return–happiness and fulfillment that cannot be described.  

I pray that with the support of Team Dayā and our generous donors–you and others like you–Senegal was only my first school–Malawi, Nicaragua and Guatemala here we come. I can’t wait to get started with your help!

In one week Team Dayā heads to Nguiddine Keur Sara in the Fatick region of Senegal to work on our first school build since before the global pandemic.

None of this work is possible without you–and the myriad of our supporters from across the technology, advertising and media sectors.

Meet the Students of Nguiddine Keur Sara

Your donations will be building a school used by first graders (35 students), second graders (35 students) and third graders (34 students).

The current school, started in October 2019, is built from sticks and straw.  It has two temporary classrooms used by three local communities.

We welcome your donations for our Sengal school build. You can donate to Team Dayā overall or to any of the three members traveling to Senegal:

• Donate to Team Dayā overall.

• Donate to Michael “The Bricklayer” Benedek. Michael is the president and CEO of leading independent data marketplace Datonics, with over 25 years in the Internet, financial services and healthcare fields based in New York and in Tel Aviv.

• Donate to Hasan “Trust & Transparency” Arik. Hasan is the founder & CEOof Redmill Solutions, a specialist media data management company headquartered in London. He has worked at Mediacom and GroupM.

• Donate to Jay “The Instigator” Sears. Jay is the founder of Team Dayā and a longtime ad tech executive. He has worked at Mastercard, Rubicon Project, Pulsepoint, ContextWeb, EDGAR Online and Wolff New Media.

We will be telling each of you more about the Senegal school build in future updates.

Three Ways You Can Help

1. Make a Donation Online
   1. Example investment opportunities:
      1. $100 Five shovels for excavating the school’s solid foundation
      2. $250 All the nails, nuts, and bolts to build a roof for the school
      3. $500 In-country mason during the entire construction of the school
      4. $1,000 Paint for a school
2. Spread the Word
   1. Share our mission with your friends, your company and your industry
   2. Invite us to speak about our mission to your network
   3. Follow us on our website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
3. Join the Team & Travel on a School Build
   1. If you have a combination of fundraising chops, an adventurous spirit and the belief each of us has the capacity to be Building Change, get in touch with us and have a conversation.

Thanks again for your continued support,

All of us at Team Dayā

It is not everyday you meet a high school student running a non-profit. Early in the pandemic we met Mark Copple, the founder of Nickel by Nickel. 

Now a senior at Crean Lutheran High School in Irvine, California, Copple collected and redeemed 5,000 cans and bottles in order to raise $250 for Team Dayā. We are excited to share our interview with Mark and to put his investment to work during our upcoming school build in Senegal, West Africa.

Please meet Mark Copple:

Team Dayā: Introduce Yourself.

Copple: My name is Mark Copple and I am 17.  I am a senior at Crean Lutheran High School in Irvine, California.  

Team Dayā: You founded your own non-profit called Nickel by Nickel Corporation – tell us about it.

Copple: My nonprofit works to collect bottles – aluminum, plastic, and glass – and redeem them for the CRV value.  This is then donated to various charities, Team Dayā is one of them, in order to make a difference.  I started this charity about five years ago with my father, and I work on it mainly on the weekends.  

Team Dayā: What inspired you to start Nickel by Nickel?

Copple: I used to go door to door in the neighborhood collecting bottles in my toy wheelbarrow.  I then figured that I could make a difference doing this, which is how Nickel by Nickel was born. 

Team Dayā: Where do you find all the bottles and cans to collect, redeem and recycle? 

Copple: I save them from home, collect them from various people I have agreements with, and also collect them from my school.  

Team Dayā: Recently Nickel by Nickel donated $250 to Team Dayā – thank you! Your gift will pay for all the nails, nuts, and bolts to build the roof of our next school. What appeals to you about Team Dayā and its mission? 

Copple: Education should be everyone’s top priority.  A society cannot function without an educated population, and it is great that you are building schools and providing people with education.  

Team Dayā: For one of your peers, or for an adult, what advice would you give to someone who has dreamt of starting a non-profit project to give back? 

Copple: I would say that it is important to note that it is a lot of work.  If you are not willing to do the work, it will be very difficult.  However, if you are willing to do the work, it is very rewarding to give back.

Team Dayā:Thank you Mark!

Make a donation Team Dayā.