Leadership Fund

The Nuer Foundation is committed to assisting those who are determined to making a difference in their communities. The Leadership Fund provides access to leadership, self-mastery, and interpersonal tools to those who are financially disadvantaged. These skills are crucial for tomorrow’s change agents but are rarely available to them.

The Nuer Foundation has an agreement with Learning as Leadership (LaL), a for-profit organization founded by Claire Nuer providing consulting, training, and coaching. Through this partnership, LaL will provide a number of scholarships to their seminars, and the Nuer Foundation will support travel and lodging for the Leadership Fund participants..

Weinstein Holocaust Symposium

In 1995, Claire Nuer was selected to participate in a biennial gathering of Holocaust scholars in Wroxton, England, organized by the Fairleigh Dickinson University. In this interdisciplinary, interfaith and international symposium, participants developed projects to address these questions: How are we to respond in word and deed to a radically transformed world, the post-Holocaust

world in which “business as usual” no longer applies? How are we to use our learnings from the Holocaust to face, responsibly, the genocidal potentials inherent in our own world?

Since Claire’s passing, her daughter, Lara Nuer, has been honored to participate in her name. Learn more about the Weinstein Holocaust Symposium.

The Ugandan Literacy Project (ULP) was initiated by Ronald Musoke who had the idea of collecting used textbooks from college campuses in the United States and sending them to his home country, Uganda. These books, which would otherwise have been thrown away, are exchanged for free school tuition for orphan girls. Uganda counts a whole generation of orphans whose parents have died from AIDS, and the country desperately needs scholastic material to fight illiteracy, which plays an important part in feeding poverty and civil war. 

With the help of the Associated Students of the College of Marin (ASCOM) and Fairchild Semiconductor, Ronald and the Nuer Foundation were able to collect a first shipping of more than 26,000 used books. The books were exchanged for tuition to educate thirty-four young orphan women who could have never afforded to pay school fees. Ronald’s project garnered attention from CNN, Africa Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Marin Independent Journal.

Once developed, this project was transferred to the Ugandan Children’s Fund, which was well-suited to expand it and continues to nurture it today.

The Hope Academy was established by Blair Akilimali, a native Tanzanian, to care for and educate Tanzania’s most vulnerable children. At the time, 17.5 million Tanzanian children live in the world’s worst poverty. Most of them are forced to survive on less than one dollar per day. Only a small percentage of them make it beyond primary school, and as a result of the high level of HIV prevalence in the country, more than 1.2 million children have been left orphaned, hungry, and searching for a brighter future. The Hope Academy's mission is to bring hope to those who are living without it and to bring light to those who are living in darkness. It was established in 2006 and now has more than fifty children in preschool and elementary school. Currently, children are being turned away because the school does not have the facilities or the resources to handle all of those who are in need. In 2009 over $7,000 was raised to buy land and build classrooms for the Hope Academy and to create a model that will enable the Hope Academy to become a self-sustaining organization.

Samantha Cooprider led a series of fund-raising efforts and targeted actions to help some schools in need in Haiti. Here are some of the actions achieved:

• Raised over $30,000

• Hand delivered over 500 pounds of donations (children's clothing, school supplies, and personal hygiene items)

• Started a micro-financing program in Roboto

• Continuously supported multiple orphanages and schools

• Helped a group of local volunteers set up a non-profit to continue the work

• Partnered with two Northern California schools to sponsor children and schools in the rural village of Masikot