Soooo, my older sister/housemate Rachel teaches history at a Bronx high school. She asked me to post this on her behalf. All that follows is hers.

Hey, it’s the semi-annual hit-you-up-for-money-for-kids plea, although this one is slightly different. At my school for the last few years the very top of the top of the kids have gotten to go on an amazing organized two-week trip to China. Most of it is paid for by local politicians and the kids work for a full year to do fund raising; they have to be willing to host a Chinese exchange student, they have to have flawless grades, recommendations from teachers, amazing community service, and put in hours and hours of work. The last couple of years we’ve also had to ask for kids to pay for their own plane tickets, which meant a lot of my best kids couldn’t even apply. And today we lost some of our funding and the principal has just asked each kid for an additional five hundred dollars, which they definitely don’t have.

I wanted to go to Donors Choose but they don’t do international field trips, and they require us to post through a travel agent. So I asked people if they’d be willing to donate a few dollars to keep some of the best kids in the Bronx from getting their poor little hearts and dreams crushed and people seemed amenable.

This is the blog the kids are keeping, by the way. You can see all the fundraisers they’ve put together and some articles written by the kids who got to travel last year.

I’m not sure what the best way to do this is — honestly I’m not sure if this will work at all — so I created a paypal button just in case. (I know there are weird things about how PayPal operates and handles money — let me know if there’s a better way, PLEASE.)

If you have a spare few dollars it would help them out TREMENDOUSLY. And as always if you want to pass the link on to other people we’d appreciate it. Thanks!

(ETA of several weeks later: Thank you all for donating! I’ve removed the button as the project has been completed. ♥)