As you may or may not remember from last year, a number of us at ScienceBlogs participated in a charity drive, raising $34,000 for the educational charity DonorsChoose. It's back again this year, and better than ever: we've got our own dedicated leader board, and the event this time out will be a full month, starting today, October 1.
To get to my challenge, follow this helpful little graphical link, which will be appearing all over the blog this month:.p>
Once you're there, you'll be presented with a list of proposals that you can donate money to. These are funding requests from teachers, mostly in poor areas, who are looking for some extra funding to help enhance their classes. These range from the high-tech (the site is awash in requests for laptops and video projectors) to the heartbreakingly basic (some teachers are asking for furniture for their classrooms). I've selected projects that are either local to me, or science-related. There are about a dozen up there now, and I may add more if it becomes necessary.
In the last year, readers of this blog contributed almost $3,000 to the Challenge I set up for last year's fundraiser. For this month's event, I'm setting a goal of $6,000-- particularly with the SixApart giveaway, that ought to be well within reach. DonorsChoose will kick in an additional 10% of the total for each Challenge that meets its goal, so there's yet another way to send extra money to school kids in need.
I'll try to keep the amount of active badgering to a minimum, but you can make this even less intrusive by following the link above, and giving them some money. I've started it off with $350 (well, $349.41) of my own (my SixApart certificate hasn't arrived yet), for a math teacher in Albany. Take a look at the list, find soemthing you like, and help some kids learn.
I'd like to underline the goodth of this program. I had a colleague completely equip a math classroom for AV (projector, smartboard) with help from donorschoose.
It's an excellent program.