For the last two Octobers, Janet of Scienceblogs' Adventures in Ethics and Science has organized Sciencebloggers into participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. We're doing it again this October, yay!
DonorsChoose collects requests for materials, supplies, equipment, money for field trips and so on from public school teachers who are trying to do great things for their students, and then faciliates matching them to people who want to help. ScienceWoman and I have chosen some projects we think would be great to fund, for kids who really need it.
And while we realize that the current economic disaster-area makes it not a great time to ask people to donate money, you can bet that it's particularly hard on public school teachers trying to scrape together resources to teach kids anything beyond chalk-and-talk. That's why this funding challenge is particularly needed now.
Science Woman and I have chosen projects for inclusion in our reader challenge on issues we particularly care about: sustainability and earth sciences, climate change, and engineering, for starters, and for schools with high to moderate poverty. See our page here, and please consider donating to any or some of these projects.
If you're new to DonorsChoose (as I am) Janet's post for launching this year's campaign says:
How It Works:Follow the links above to the DonorsChoose website.
Pick a project from the slate the blogger has selected (or more than one project, if you just can't choose).
Donate.
(If you're the loyal reader of multiple participating blogs and you don't want to play favorites, you can, of course, donate to multiple challenges!)
DonorsChoose will send you a confirmation email. Hold onto it; our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes. Details about the prizes and how to get entered will be posted here soon!
Sit back and watch the challenges inch towards their goals, and check the ScienceBlogs leaderboard to see how many students will be impacted by your generosity. And, if you like, you can track our collective progress on the motherboard, which will let you see just how badly ScienceBlogs bloggers are kicking the butts of tech bloggers, mommy bloggers, knitting bloggers, and the like.
See the Sciencewomen Reader Challenge page here. And watch this weekend for an announcement of fun incentive prizes that we're offering on our own. (If I can get to it. :-) )
Thanks for your support of this project, and your generosity. Those teachers and kids will really appreciate it.
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It's awesome that you ladies do this. Most people don't realize how many funds in certain urban (read: poor) areas have been taken away from schools due to voucher programs and the like and silly things, like cheapo solar powered calculators for grade school and educational posters, have to come out of the teachers' pockets. Thanks for this!
oh and I am totally linking to your reader challenge from my blog... yay for warm fuzzy feelings!
Yay Mimi! Yay warm fuzzies! Other folks: if you link to our challenge, please let us know here!
Okay, as of now, y'all rock - we have the largest number of donations compared to all the other Scienceblogs. Yay SW readers!!
We'll throw in a free t-shirt as a prize, if it helps.