Teachers and educators are part of a special community that always offers support and assistance in times of need. We’ve seen this time and time again with our community at WeAreTeachers–there’s a special bond and camaraderie about working in this field. If you’re looking for ways to help fellow educators and schools affected by Hurricane Harvey, start here.
1. Support the Texas AFT
Texas AFT is a teacher union that has a long history of helping their educators in need. They have a place right on their website where teachers can apply for assistance. There’s also a place on this page where you can donate, and you can be sure they’ll put your funds to good use.
2. Have Your Students Do a Fundraiser Through WE Schools
Students who want to raise money to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey can sign up their group with the WE Schools programs and have their fundraising matched dollar-for-dollar by the Allstate Foundation up to $250,000. So if your students raise 500 dollars, that means a $1000 donation. Sign up now!
3. Donate to the Red Cross
There’s a reason the Red Cross is mentioned time and time again when it comes to disaster relief. They do excellent work and will definitely put your donation to help the communities, including schools, who were affected. Here’s their donation page for Harvey.
4. Fill a Food Backpack for a Kid
The Houston Food Bank is taking a hard hit, and every little bit helps so they can be back up and running as soon as possible They have a really cool program that sends food home with kids on the weekends so they have things to eat even when they’re not at school. Just $69 can feed a child every weekend for the entire school year. Learn more about it here.
5. Open Up Your Home
Do you happen to be in the area and have a home you can open up to others? Air BNB has a special section of their website offering urgent accommodations. Check it out here where dozens of people are offering up their home for free.
6. Talk to Your Students
The American School Counselor Association has some great resources on helping kids deal with hurricanes and floods. Even if you’re not an educator in Texas with students affected, it’s still good to talk about natural disasters with students. Here are some tips and resources from their website. Even though this isn’t a direct monetary contribution, the education you can provide is powerful.
7. Help a Classroom Through DonorsChoose
This site has been helping classrooms since 2000, and they’ve set up a special area of their site to help schools affected by the damage in Louisiana and Texas. Here’s the landing page for the general fund site. While you can still find individual classrooms to support on DonorsChoose, this is the best way to affect classrooms immediately.
8. Share on Social Media
We have amazing, powerful tools at our fingertips. Share this post and others like it on your social media. You just might make someone, stop, pause and send a quick $20. While it might not seem like much, it’s actually pretty amazing to think about what could happen if we all came together.
