Most recently, I wrote a couple of posts--the original Eliminate Math Anxiety post and then the popular Mobius Marinara post--about my friend Maria Droujkova of Natural Math and her attempt to raise $6,200 through Tipping Bucket to extend her work on teaching significant math topics to children from 0-5 years into a book and online community that could reach many more people. The deal with Tipping Bucket is that people pledge money to projects they want to support, but if the organizers don't attract all the money they need to make the project work by a set deadline, the pledges are returned to the donors.
However, I'm happy to report that Maria's Moebius Noodles received its full funding! So the project is now a go, thanks to many generous donors (including, I'm proud to say, my son, who gave a full week's allowance to support this effort). If you want to find out about developments on this project, follow Maria's blog, Math Accent (which is a font of wonderful information about all sorts of different math topics, not just those related to our youngest learners).
And speaking of our youngest...at the end of last month, I also posted about one of our local homeschooling families who, unfortunately, had lost both of their twin babies. On top of the terrible loss of their infant girls, they had a lot of bills to deal with, so we were having an online fundraising effort to support them financially.
In this case, it is still a sad story. However, I am happy to report that this Internet effort between friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends of...., well, it resulted in raising $8,372.32 for the family. I know that the family really appreciates every gift, not only for helping them deal with their financial issues, but as a vote of confidence in their ability to survive through the worse circumstances that a family ever needs to confront--a loss of one (or, in this case, two) of their beloved children.
Both of these remind me of one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa, who once said:
"What we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."Both of these projects show what is possible when a lot of ordinary people give just a little to a good cause. It is easy to think that what you can afford--$1, $5, $10--can't make a difference. But you put all those drops together, and it creates an ocean.
I also heard from several readers of this blog who said they had supported these efforts. So I want to thank you personally for your support. I know many will reap benefits from your gift, and I'm glad that you were part of our ocean.
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