Keep Going: Create 2 Educate Entry

Full disclosure: this post was written as part of a fundraising contest

I thought about this prompt for weeks, hoping that eventually I would have some sort of brilliant idea of how to portray a world where every person, regardless of gender or age, has access to education. I’m not a particularly artistic person, to be honest. My knitting is decent, but not necessarily the best medium for expressing this ideal world of equal access to education. Meanwhile, I was procrastinating writing a new Dreams to Acts blog post about maintaining optimism when fundraising (and life in general) is rough. So, here we are: two birds, one stone.

Why I’m (Still) Asking for Your Money

Valentine’s Day, one year later. I’m at Starbucks again, except this time I walked there and there is no snow. Well. There’s snow at home, but I’m in New Orleans (technically at a professional conference). It’s been an emotional few days of traveling from Nicaragua to NOLA- 30 hours without sleep, 24 without solid food. I put on a dirty, probably smelly t-shirt and leggings because I need to have some piece of the school close to me. Okay, fine. Full disclosure: the t-shirt still has a few small pieces of bamboo and wood glue clinging to it from when I was working on finishing up the staircase with a close friend. It smells like sunscreen, bug spray, and Nicaragua. And I refuse to wash away these physical reminders of such an incredible journey. 

5 Things I Learned from Fundraising $5,000

According to the pretty countdown app on my phone, I begin my journey to Nicaragua in 3 days and 16 hours, which is both thrilling and a little bit terrifying. As some of you may know, I first began fundraising for the Free High School of San Juan del Sur in the beginning of March, which means I have been emotionally invested in this project for over 8 months now. Everyone keeps telling me how life changing my trip will be, and while I completely agree that it will be an incredible experience, I don’t think many people realize that the past 8 months of fundraising have already changed my life. When I first clicked the link to join the fundraising team on Crowdrise, I had no idea how much the act of fundraising itself would change me.

Fair warning: These 5 things are broad life lessons, not fundraising tips. I could probably do a post about fundraising tips later, if people are interested, though.