Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Be a Superhero: Put Comics in the Classroom

Donors Choose is an incredible website that allows teachers in our underfunded public school systems to appeal directly to citizens for help in funding special projects. They have raised 13,500,000 since 2000, the vast majority of which went to schools in low income communities. Donors Choose is a 501c3 organization, meaning your gift is tax deductible.

http://www.donorschoose.org
Molly, my editor, and I were browsing through some of these projects today, and thought there was an open window for the comics community to help: several projects are specifically requesting funds for comics and graphic novels in the classroom. Knowing that most comics fans are worried about the "next generation," we felt that this would be an incredible way to improve comic visibility, expose a new generation to the medium, and most importantly, get some kids excited about reading.
So we've developed the Be a Superhero: Put Comics in the Classroom Challenge.
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/viewChallenge.html?id=17279

We picked several of the comic-related requests and hope you will choose to fund one of them. Any amount you can spare will help. To encourage you, we've got prizes!
You will receive a receipt from Donor's Choice within minutes of making a donation. Forward that receipt (it includes the amount you donated, but no personal/financial information) to this address: comicsforkids at gmail dot com.

We will enter you in a drawing for the following: (no minimum donation required, one entry per person)
Grand Prize: Original Comic Art, donated by me: An Unused Athena Voltaire: Legend of Mu-King COVER (shown here)
Additional Prizes:
1 DVD set of Veronica Mars, the Complete First Season
The first 3 Scott Pilgrim Trades

We may have more prizes if this takes off and we hit some artists and publishers up for donations. The challenge is open until October 31. Feel free to post it on your blog. Let's see the comic community give back!

Thankfully, Molly is handling prize fulfillment for this, which is good news to those of you who have dealt with my slow ass.

Feel free to post this on your blog. We think we could blow away $1000 if enough fans took a look at the kids in need. If you see any more projects you would like added to the challenge, let us know!