As you know, we operate this Web site in part to raise money for our favorite charity. Our present charity is Young Writers Project, a wonderful nonprofit that is helping students learn to write better.

We hope you will contribute to this organization with the same generosity you have shown our previous favorite charity.

To donate to the Young Writers Project, through PayPal click here.

Why do we support the YWP?

Across the nation students' writing skills are diminishing at an alarming rate and this unique organization is attempting to do something about that. YWP engages students to write, helps them improve and publishes their best work in daily newspapers, on radio, on public television and on stage.

In its first as a nonprofit, it has received more than 3,200 submissions for its newspaper project and more than 1,000 pieces of writing on its interactive Web site www.youngwritersproject.org.

It created a College Mentors program in which top students from several Vermont colleges provide feedback on each piece of writing that is submitted. This in an amazing experience for both the college mentor and the young writer receiving advice.

It also is doing several pilot online classrooms with area schools with remarkable results.

To donate to the Young Writers Project, through PayPal click here.

Presently the project is run by one person, Geoffrey Gevalt, an award-winning writer and editor who has been a newsroom leader at various newspapers around the country and who, for two years, was a judge of the Pulitzer Prizes for Beat Reporting.

Young Writers Project believes its unique formula -- providing students the incentive of getting published and the information and feedback needed to improve -- can lead to great success in the classroom. It also believes that this can be a model for other areas around the country.

The Vermont Business Roundtable, a group of approximately 125 leaders of top businesses and colleges in Vermont, feels the same way. It has provided YWP with a two-year grant to pay for the core costs of the project.

But the YWP needs to expand if it is to continue its work with the depth and quality it desires.

It needs your help, as a token of your appreciation for what it does and for the services we provide you on this site for free.

To donate to the Young Writers Project, through PayPal click here.

Thanks so much,

Kathleen