More on DonorsChoose

As I mentioned yesterday, Mike Dunford, one of the bloggers involved in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, blogged about some of the new projects he had added to his list. They were totally heartbreaking, including a $298 request for an overhead projector screen (the teacher is currently using a sheet of white paper, which limits the size and usefulness of the projected image), another asking for $314 for drawing paper, construction paper, tissue paper, and clothes line to display the finished projects, and one who’s asking for paper, pencil, marker, crayons.

Finally, in his latest update, Mike added a request from a teacher who wants something to write on.

We have been instructed to cover up all of our blackboards which are old and ruined. As a result, I have to teach all of my lessons on chart paper that I always hang in the classroom so that the children can have a visual representation of what we have accomplished each day.

Therefore, I am asking if my class could please be supplied with a large donation of chart paper for the rest of the school year, as this is all I have to work with and it runs out very quickly. It can be both the small pads as well as the really big pads. We are not provided with these at our school which becomes very difficult for me.

If these requests were to fund schools somewhere in the poorest parts of the world, I would consider the requests just as sad. And there are a lot of places where things are a lot worse. The things is this going on in the richest country in the world. How does the city that is home to Wall Street tolerate this sort of thing? How can that sort of wealth – where people get million-dollar bonuses – live side by side with that sort of deprivation? I find it impossible to wrap my mind around something like that.