My husband and I got home from visiting my mother out of town. When we came home, my husband checked to see if any mail came. We found out our car insurance premiums will go down $20/month. Yea! We got even better news, a school program we donated through donorschoose.org sent us a thank you note from the teacher and some cards from the students.

To give you an idea ,here’s the program description from the teacher:

I teach 8th grade English at an inner city middle school. With tightened budgets, it has been impossible to get classroom sets of high interest books that our students will read with enjoyment. During the 3 years that I have been teaching at the school, no class sets have been purchased for student reading and enrichment in my classroom.

Students will recognize the power of words to affect change as they read, write, and increase their vocabularies. They will become more tolerant of others and appreciate differences.

If we acquire the books that I have requested, ‘Diary of Anne Frank’, ‘Zlata’s Diary’, and ‘The Freedom Writers’ Diary’, my students will recognize the power of young people, to promote awareness of issues and to even change policies.

I believe that my students’ self-esteem will be improved, their knowledge of the world around them will be improved. I believe that they will identify with adversities in the literature and will recognize that they can overcome many obstacles.

We will read the books, we will write journals, and respond to the readings. We will create a tolerance project which will include audio and video presentations, letter writing, and a field trip. We will identify a cause affecting young people which we will embrace and support as a class.

In addition to boosting reading skills, donors who select this project will be promoting tolerance and global awareness and concern.

The pictures were wonderful as we got to put faces with the site. Since these are minors, I’m leery putting their pictures up without permission. We didn’t by any means donate much money (we‘re not rich in case you didn’t know), but if you read the cards, you’ll get a sense of how much these students appreciate the books.

Here’s two of the cards we got:

Let me say that it made my day.

If you want to support a charity, but have no idea which one, please consider Donors Choose. It’s easy and quite affordable. Myfirst donation was $25, which was scraped up with not eating out for a week. You choose the project that means the most to you personally.

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