Tuesday, December 23, 2008

My vote is in. How about yours?


Obama says he wants to hear ideas from all Americans so Change.org is taking him up on it. Vote for your favorite idea and the top 10 will be presented to Obama on inauguration day.

The causes range from Agriculture to Women's rights, so I'm sure there will be at least 1 idea that you will find worthy of support. And if not? You can submit your own idea. This is the wisdom of crowds at it's finest.

I found out about this vote through an email I received from Citizen Schools. Citizen Schools provides an after school program for inner city middle schools. What they do is convert ordinary you and me, who have some sort of expertise and/or passion into Citizen teachers. A Citizen Teacher is guided through a workshop with Citizen schools where they help you turn your expertise into a 10 week apprenticeship (hands-on learning projects) which the volunteer citizen teacher delivers twice a week and culminates with a "Wow Project". As you might guess, it's a project that literally leaves the kids saying "Wow" in amazement at what they have learned and accomplished.

While in Boston, I did the program twice, the first at the Edison middle school in Brighton and the second time at the Umana Barnes middle school in East Boston. Not only were the kids amazing, but I was also impressed with the organization run by supportive, dedicated and professional people.

So needless to say, I encourage you to vote for Citizen Schools so their organization and program can get some air time with Obama and deliver more positive experiences to more middle schools across the US.

What ideas do you want to see in the top 10?

2 comments:

David said...

Hey there!

Thanks for posting! With your great support, we made it into the second round. Now, we have more work to do -
http://citizenschools.org/change/ - in order to win!

Thanks for your support!
--Dave / Citizen Schools

Jon said...

Fantastic. Congratulations! Let's see if Citizen Schools can go all the way. Your program deserves it.