DonorsChoose "September to Remember"

My last post was also about DonorsChoose, but since it's been 3 months, and they've got a new campaign going, I wanted to write about it again. As a result of my last challenge (Thanks to all those who contributed!) and some confusion on my part for the way people contributed to it, I ended up with several gift certificates after the proposal in my challenge had already been fully funded.

I knew that they're in the midst of a big fund drive for the month of September ($1.2M nationwide, $250K in California) so I figured this would be a good time to cash in some of those gift certificates.

I had a lot of fun doing it.

In each case, I was able to find a project that I thought would be meaningful to the person who had given me the gift certificate:

• A couple from San Jose, he got his degree in math. For them, I found a San Jose school that was looking for math teaching aids for kindergartners.
  
  
• A friend from San Mateo who's into photography. For him, I found a program in San Bruno that's encouraging writing skills for a "Severely Disordered Language Day Class" of high schoolers through digital photography.
  
  
• A family from Venezuela with a girl in first grade. For them, I found a project that helps kindergartners in San Jose by hearing tapes of stories in English, even if they come from non-English speaking homes.
  
  
• A friend from Oakland who was born in Iran. For her, I found a teacher in Oakland whose class of 9th graders will read Persepolis, a story about a girl who lives through the Iranian revolution, as a way to teach Iranian history.
  

If you're puzzling over what to get that difficult to shop for friend or relative, I was amazed at the range of meaningful projects that are part of the DonorsChoose list. Please take a look at the challenge grant and see if you're as lucky as I was in finding the appropriate gift.