Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Challenge Update: Two New Educational Proposals Added

We've added two new educational proposals to the RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge, our ongoing philanthropic venture: Asian American Heritage One Book at a Time and Characters that Look Like Me.

These two proposals seek to stir the imaginations of our young children through the use of literature that promotes positive images of diversity. And we all know what happens when a child is inspired through literature: a lifelong love of learning, and a propensity toward exploring life's endless possibilities...

Launched in June 2007, 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
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Asian American Heritage One Book at a Time
- Chicago, Illinois - PreK-2 - 95% low income -

"I work in Chinatown in Chicago. My classroom is 100% Asian-American. As a Kindergarten teacher, I spend lots of time reading aloud to my students.

"I feel it is important that they are exposed to stories with Asian-American characters as well as stories that they are able to relate to. I have selected 18 books that I feel would benefit my students as we work towards their understanding of family heritage and the value of cooperating within the community.

"My students will benefit greatly from these books because they are written in a way that not only I can read them, but as the year progresses the students will take ownership of the stories as their literacy skills develop.

"Please help my students become better readers by making connections with these stories.

"My students need a collection of books that reflect their Asian American heritage. The cost of this proposal is $379, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fulfillment."


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Characters That Look Like Me!
- Oakland, California - PreK-2 - 58% low income -

"I am a second year Kindergarten teacher in a low-income public school in Oakland, Ca. Over 90% of our student population qualifies for the federally funded breakfast/lunch program. I teach a variety of students from a multitude of different cultures, Filipino, African American, Chinese, and Hispanic.I have some books in my library and I have spent a lot of time and money acquiring the books. However, my classroom library lacks books featuring African American, Hispanic and Asian children. My students LOVE to read and be read to. They would greatly benefit from the exposure of characters from many different ethnic groups and it would help them to appreciate the diverse society that they live in.Please help me build a strong multicultural foundation with the multicultural books I have selected. These books will allow my students accessibility to real literature and it will hook them and excite them to learn about the world around them, as well as validate where they come from. By providing my students with books that show multicultural characters, like themselves, you will provide resources that build on the basic curriculum and on the equity we are trying to bring into our classroom community. These books will allow my students to know so much more about themselves, others and the world. Thank you so much.

"My project needs multicultural books that depict characters like the students in my class: African American, Asian, and Hispanic. I have selected a number of Multicultural sets about Holidays, Children of the World, and such titles as On Mother's Lap, Fiesta, Round is a Moon Cake and Whoever You Are. The cost of this proposal is $520, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fulfillment."

4 comments:

InstantYang said...

Hey guys,

It's Instant Yang (long lost and little lamented RiceDaddy) :)

Just so's you guys know, to fulfill my promise of topping up the DonorsChoose that was running when I wrote my column incorporating the insights of many of my peers here I threw $750 into the till for these two initiatives. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I was really supposed to fund (I offered to match contributions from other folks--it was something like $578 as I recall, but I lost track because the initiatives funded up so quickly)...

So I figured let's just round it up to $750 and wish the kids of Chicago and Oakland the best of fortune.

That said, there're a couple of dollars still remaining on the Oakland one--someone finish it off, quick!

Hope everyone's well...I keep thinking I'll get back into blogmatic fashion one of these days, but life and scheduling have been unkind.

Love,

Jeff

SoulSnax said...

Holy crap, can you believe what you guys have done? The RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge is currently ranked #2 among the General Blogs Leaderboard, right behind the Tomato Nation Fall Contest.

You folks should be proud of yourselves. Many years from now, when you're in the care of a talented physician or nurse, it could very well be one of the many children whom we've helped to empower through this RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge.

So, don't think for a minute that you haven't made a positive difference in this world, because all of you are heroes!

Namaste

daddy in a strange land said...

Hey Soulsnax, what happened? The other day, after you added these and InstantYang added his money, we were like 80-something percent of goal, now it's back to 60-something.

InstantYang said...

i think SS added a bunch more challenges! The two that were up there got completed. Oh, and we're now number 3 on the bloglist, so someone better get givin' if we're going to hold pride.

Tomato Nation is at well over 100K, however, so the likelihood of us topping them is slim/none :P

j