I am officially closing donations to this campaign. Although we fell short of the goal, we're not as short as the ticker shows thanks to donations from friends that came directly to me (which I have passed along to Adventures in Life). And we definitely raised enough to keep the project moving forward.
If anyone finds this campaign and wants to donate, you can give directly to Adventures in Life Ministry. This is a portion of the larger $50,000 project that we're working on, and so further donations will continue to help the cause:
https://www.ailministry.org/donateI'm looking forward to heading to Oaxaca in early January 2019, and continuing to work on pushing this project forward. If you want to see what we're up to, visit our webpage:
https://oaxacasciencecenter.weebly.com/Updates will be placed under the timeline. Thank you all for your support!
-------------------
I've been talking about this project for a while and working hard to lay the groundwork, and now it's finally time for us to take the big leap and make it happen!
I am partnering with Dave Miller and the non-profit he co-founded in 1992, Adventures in Life Ministry. We are working to fund a Science/Discovery Center in Eloxochitlán, high up in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico. Eloxochitlán is one of the poorest communities in all of Mexico. Educational opportunities are sorely lacking in this area. Advanced science classes are almost non-existent.
The idea for the science center came out of doing little science activities with Dave during the summer camps that they run. The picture above is from one of our first years doing science at the camp. One particular experiment, the corn starch fireball, really got some of the locals to take notice. From that, a question started to bubble up: Can we do more of this?
Fast forward across two years of work with Dave developing science activities (with the help of my colleagues), securing a location, creating equipment lists, and going through all the details of the plan, and we are now on the cusp of turning this dream into reality.
Our goal is to raise a total of $50,000 before December 1. My personal goal is to raise $7500.00 of that goal.
Your tax deductible donations will be used to
• Provide materials and laboratory equipment [think microscopes, incubators, centrifuges, etc] for the science center.
• Provide 2 years of salary for local professors to be leaders and teachers at the center.
Will you help us make a science center a reality for a small community in Oaxaca? Will you help me make it possible for us to maybe inspire the next great Mexican scientist?
Visit the webpage to learn more about Eloxochitlan and the story behind the project:
https://oaxacasciencecenter.weebly.com/