GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist and her five parrots are currently relocating to Germany, where she will continue writing her blog while also writing a book and learning German. (Meanwhile, her parrots will continue to nibble on her extensive personal library.) If you appreciate GrrlScientist's writing, you can help pay her living expenses by hiring her to "blog" your conference, speak at your club or write articles for your publication (or by clicking on the Paypal button below). If you read an essay on this blog that you especially enjoyed, please nominate it for inclusion in 
tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty
Here's the latest news from DonorsChoose: collectively, all of the blog writers and the 4,038 citizen philanthropists who participated in the Social Media Challenge have raised more than $565,000 to help more than 99,000 students in public schools throughout the US!!! I think this is amazing! JUST the ScienceBloggers team has raised an astonishing $54,358 from 244 citizen philanthropists (my blog has raised $5,646.31 so far -- last year, the ScienceBlogs team raised $38,000 and my blog raised $2,884.55)
But there's still three days to go, and I want all of us to continue raising money to help impoverished classroom kids make progress towards realizing their dreams. We have three days left, let's do everything we can to give more funds for these worthy projects!
DonorsChoose writes:
Last week we issued a call to all of the Social Media Challenge participants to raise as much as they could by this past Sunday and you all responded in a HUGE way. Collectively, we've raised over $565,000, which surpasses the last two years vastly.
As of today, 4,038 citizen philanthropists have pitched in to help us bring resources to over 99,000 students in public schools across the country.
You may have also noticed a huge surge in your giving page impact totals, thanks to the $200,000 match offer that HP has offered up. For those of you with lingering questions about how that HP match will work, here's the low-down. Yesterday, HP allocated a proportionate share of the funds to all giving pages. The total impact that you currently see does not actually fund projects. Instead, HP will be sending electronic DonorsChoose.org giving cards to all donors who contributed to your Social Media Challenge giving page after the competition is over (these should go out in mid November). So your page gets the credit, but your readers get to choose which projects to fund!
Education
Humanities & Social Science
