Donations are still welcome and are eligible for matching by Google! Please see the donation page for Google.
In early September 2013, the Cambridge-based Google Community Affairs team invited representatives of Friends of CRLS and Cambridge School Committee member Fred Fantini to their headquarters in Kendall Square to talk about a prospective fundraising event at Google to mark the beginning of the school year. In short order we put our heads together to attract Google employees’ attention to CRLS – the what and where of our school, and why and how they could support our students. Friends of CRLS offered four of its established programs as options for contributions: Faculty Innovation Grants, Scholarships, the College Success Program (“It Takes a Village”), and Travel Fellowships. Google offered the employees the option to request a match.
The September 12, 2013, event culminated with a “Happy Hour” social mixer for employees and supporters of Friends of CRLS at the Google’s Chatham Cafe. Speakers were CRLS Principal Damon Smith, the “Speak Up” spoken word compositions of student poets Maddie Payne, Jenny Vernick, and Leah Cohen, and Elaine Schear, President of FOCRLS. Other CRLS attendees supporting FOCRLS included faculty members who had been Faculty Innovation Grant recipients: Rene Meshon, Debi Milligan, Edward Byrne, and Dr. Kimberly Parker, as well as FOCRLS board members Elizabeth Vernon and Community Outreach Liaison Victoria Harris, parent business outreach volunteer Dawn Baxter, and communications volunteer Beena Sarwar.
This event was supported by the CRLS Media Arts Department; videography by intern Russell DeLuca Kavanagh.
Google’s support of Friends of CRLS was part of a broad month-long education initiative conducted by Google. Along with Cambridge-based EF Education First, Google/Cambridge also recently supported CRLS students with its first “Glocal Challenge”, a competitive research-based local-global environmental initiative at the high school that culminated with a trip to Costa Rica in April 2013.
Photos of the event are available in an album on our Facebook page, here.