My team and I are amazed and humbled by the support we’ve gotten this week for our First Generation Digital Storytelling crowd funding project. We are positioned to blast past our original goal in this very first week so that we can come closer to full funding for this project.
We cannot wait to tell these students about the community that cared about hearing their stories. That’s been the most amazing part of this project for me — this growing community of support.
Today, we want to deepen that community by encouraging people for whom $5 would be just the right donation, given where they are in life. We think that most everyone can donate at least $5 and we would love to build and build the numbers of supporters behind this project.
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In a workshop a few years ago, one participant said “you know, I don’t have any images from college. I was always just at work or school”. There was a pause in the buzz of energy in the room –a recognition among many of us. For many of us, college was not about the friends and dorms and parties and football games. It was about navigating it alone.
Here’s the story she created in that workshop.
And here’s what she wrote afterward:
I never thought my journey through college was anything special. I was always embarrassed that it was taking so long and either joked about or glossed over the amount of time that had passed since high school. Looking back I see that the perseverance and resilience required to finish a four year degree over the course of 23 years, as a first generation college student, is extraordinary and something to be proud of.
I’m so moved that when we do the next workshops, I’ll be able to tell the students that I’m there because of the awesome generosity of this community behind this project who get the importance of knowing and telling one’s story, and who made this project possible. They’re not doing this alone.
$5 at a time, we can do this.
Are you in?
(and if that education=success thing did work out for you, you can add digit or two before or after that 5!).
Education and Class 