Mini-funding the next generation

I think most of us give something to charity as our means permit.  I would guess that most people donate to their church, their kid's schools, and probably a little (or a lot) to causes like Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).  And I suspect a lot of people donate to their food shelf, the homeless network or some other community effort through their work or life.  THESE ARE ALL GOOD THINGS!!!  They do help people, and regardless of how you feel about people needing to get up off their ass and help themselves, sometimes people do need help.  If your attitude is "I've got mine, so screw you" - you can probably stop reading now, turn the computer off and go enjoy your life.  This isn't about you.

I've been doing more and more 'minifunding' of late.  Small donations, as directly as I can, to specific programs or projects that serve a real need.  Most of these are oriented towards kids, education and food safety nets.  A kid who gets breakfast does better in school.  Making sure they get something other than fried chicken products at lunch means they might learn about real food for themselves later on.  And having books to read, robots to program, and widgets to build can mean that they aspire to something more than pushing a wheelbarrow or working at Wallyworld.

I consider myself privileged to have a number of friends who are educators.  I think most of these folks are very good teachers, taking pride in their job, and caring about their students.  I know a few who go the extra mile.  Mark T., an educator here in Minneapolis teaches at a school in a lower income neighborhood.  Mark started a biking program for the kids at his school.  They started out small, but now have 30+ kids riding several miles every afternoon,

My buddy Tegan in Oklahoma City is another teach who cares far beyond the basics.  By choice, Tegan teaches at one of the highest poverty rate schools in OKC.  Her classes are full of kids who have lots going against them in life.  But - they've got a great teacher.  Tegan has built the foundation of a robotics lab for these 5th graders.  Four classes of 5th graders share this small lab, but they are engaged!

Anyway, yesterday Tegan put out a donors choose fundraiser to buy a second laptop for this lab so that twice as many kids can be engaged in writing instruction programs for the robot at any given time.  They met the goal in about a day, so the kids will get more time this year. Direct, low overhead, low cost, high impact.  I'm so happy to see them get the chance.  If you are interested in helping, you can donate to help fund whatever is next on her shopping list by clicking on the 'fundraiser' link at the top of this paragraph.

I'd like to find or fund another pair of laptops this year, and maybe a Raspberry PI or Arduino lab next year. If you are in the Minneapolis area and have a good surplus laptop or other things that would be useful to a lab, drop me a note and I can help with transport.

~marsh