At the top of our sidebar, there's a link to our first official philanthropic venture: The RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge.It's one thing for us to blog about the unique experience of being RiceDaddies, and the special issues we face as 21st century Asian-American parents. But with this new challenge, we now hope to add weight to our words by actually putting our money where our mouths are.
We RiceDaddies believe that we have a unique perspective as Asian-American parents because many of us grew up in this country at a time when Western pop culture and media may have had a marginalizing effect upon our social and cultural development. The lack of positive portrayals of diversity has resulted in negative implicit associations with people of color, even among people of color themselves. Such negative associations with people of color continue to perpetuate behavior and violence against people of color.
If media producers fail to portray our children in a positive, beautiful way, then it is up to us to do it. While some things have changed for the better, some things still remain the same. So, for any improvement to continue, we must choose to be the agents of such change.
With that in mind, The RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge aims to mitigate the marginalizing effects of diversity-negligent pop culture and media by funding innovative educational programs that do the following:
- Promote positive images of ourselves for our children
- Promote positive images of ourselves for other people and their children
- Develop skills in our children that empower them to be leaders in the world in which we live
- Promote pride in one's culture instead of shame
- Promote self-respect and appreciation for others like ourselves
- Develop our children's ability to use their imaginations in an empowering way
- Encourage our children to be who they truly are
Donations to the challenge currently go to the following public school educational programs:
Take the time to read about each of the educational programs featured in the challenge. You'll see that your donation will pay social dividends for generations to come.
As an added incentive for you to donate, my wife and I have decided to offer a dollar-for-dollar match on all donations made from now through Friday, June 15th. That means every dollar you donate is worth double! So go straight to The RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge and donate today!
3 comments:
Thanks to new daddy Soulsnax for showing initiative on this front and for introducing us to Donors Choose. As a former teacher in a working class multiethnic urban public high school, I can say that the opportunity for innovative teachers and community supporters to connect directly in support of particular projects is amazing and unique. And specifically, the chance for us as diverse parents of a new generation of children of color to lend our monetary support to teachers with values and visions that match our own, teaching children so much like our own, is one we couldn't pass up. So please, spread the word, and join the challenge.
That sounds like a great cause. I'm glad you are using this site to promote it.
Hey, have you guys ever thought about putting up ads? You could donate some/ all of the proceeds to the cause of your choice. Just a thought. I think you get enough traffic that you could make some money.
Thanks for doing this guys, these sound like great causes. I second Rachel in the inclusion of ads for the purpose of donation.
Post a Comment