The holiday season is in full swing, with music and magic in the air, lights twinkling in frosty windows… and letters from scientists being torn open in classrooms across the US!
All of our pre-scientist students have received their first letters and have enjoyed “Opening Day” with their classmates, learning about their new pen pals and the fun scientific work that they do. I’ll be back with a report from our classrooms in the new year, after I’ve had a chance to ask them about the experience. Preliminary reports from the teachers are that the students were delighted by their letters, and very excited to write back with questions and stories of their own.
This is the part where we make our holiday wish, and ask you for help.
Stamps and envelopes get expensive when we’re talking about 400 letters. And while we’re ecstatic to have over forty international scientists on our pen pal list this year, international postage is an extra expense for our teachers, whose budgets are already stretched too thin. Any donations you make will help to keep the program going. Whether it’s supplies or stamps mailed directly to our classrooms, or a click of a PayPal button, every little bit helps us to ensure that every student in every one of our classrooms can access the supplies and postage they need to get letters back to their pen pals.
If you’re the type to make charitable donations at the end of the year, please consider giving a little extra love to your pen pals and their classrooms.
If you want to donate physical supplies (paper, envelopes, domestic-rate and international-rate US postage stamps), you can mail them directly to the classroom using the address you were given for your pen pal. If you are not currently writing to a pen pal but still want to help, you can email us at admin@prescientist.org and we will give you an address to use. And if shopping for just one more thing will put you over the edge this December, then you can send us a gift electronically using our PayPal donation button here. Every cent donated goes towards writing supplies, postage, and the hosting fees we need to keep the guts of the program going.
A letter to Santa might bring a kid a bike, but a letter to a scientist can bring a whole new perspective on the future. Help us make that happen!
