'Tis the season of giving

Yesterday I put up a tiny tree and now I am in full holiday mode. When I was a kid, Christmas was all about getting presents and playing with those presents... and eating way too much good (edit: junk) food too. I still get excited about both, of course, but now I get equally excited about giving gifts and sharing experiences with the people I love. As an adult I also started giving to organizations, initiatives and causes that I believe in and whose work I appreciate (like The Narwhal, In Defense of Plants, 500 Women Scientists, among others).

And now that I am on the other side of this, I understand how important contributions are to be successful. And now having facilitated a handful of well received activities since coming into existence two short months ago, this is becoming increasingly apparent!

The services provided by Conference2Classroom are free to participating schools and classrooms. The experts attending conferences who register with us are volunteering their time.

But there are costs to organizing these events. There are transportation costs to get participating experts from conferences to schools - especially as we try to reach more rural or remote communities! We hope to design prizes for students and thank you gifts for our participating experts - because who doesn't like some free swag! There are promotional material costs (we now have a logo!), web hosting costs, and other operational and material costs of starting an ambitious organization like Conference2Classroom. One of our ambitions for the coming year is to develop a web series on science communication and deliver a workshop on how to do this effectively. This would benefit our participating experts and would serve to introduce more people to science communication.

If you are in a giving mood this holiday seasons and are looking for a new cause to support, please consider donating to Conference2Classroom! Your contribution helps us bring experts attending conferences across Canada to classrooms in the host city, and so much more too!