Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Graham

Everybody Wins

Mrs. Ward teaches at Wadsworth Elementary School, a high poverty school in Chicago, Illinois. She feels that financial literacy is the first step to getting out of poverty, and feels teaching her students this early is important. As we all know, the public school system in the states is far from wealthy, so when conscientious teachers like Mrs. Ward have ideas like this, there is usually no money in the budget to do anything about it.

With Donors Choose, Mrs. Ward is able to post her idea for the purchase of a product called the Money Savvy Piggy Bank. It teaches kids the fundamentals of money management - spending, saving, donating and investing. Mrs. Ward believes these are the fundamentals of money every child should be taught from an early age.

To do this Mrs. Ward needs $1000 to buy 16 money savvy pigs and the accompanying MSK coloring books. Both are used together to teach these fundamentals in an informative and child appropriate way. She has only $71 dollars left to go to purchase her supplies.

Mrs. Graham teaches at Thomas Hooker Elementary School in Bridgeport Connecticut, another high poverty elementary school. Unlike Mrs. Ward, the kids at this school don't even have access to the basic supplies needed to learn - pencils, erasers and paper. The district is going through some major financial windfalls, and Mrs. Graham was told she was given the last 50 pencils and wasn't sure if there would be anymore to replace those for the entire year. She only needs $350 and has $25 left to go. 

After looking at a few different projects besides Mrs. Ward's and Mrs. Graham's, I noticed a lot of quality checking done on each project by Donors Choose administration. Once the ask was posted, Donors Choose would tell those interested that the teacher, project had in fact been verified and was for a legitimate purpose.

Donors Choose is a fantastic website specifically for teachers. As mentioned before, the public school system in the United States is under funded. Teachers have a very difficult time trying to provide their classrooms the best education due to lack of supplies. If not for this website, teachers would have to do without which essentially means the children do without. 

They never ask for absorbent amounts of money, and they always show exactly where the money is going. I think this focused fundraising technique is highly effective and really makes a difference for teachers across the United States like Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Graham who now have what they need to do their job the absolute best they can.

Ryan McCaffrey