TED Prize 2008 TED Prize > Dave Eggers > Wish: Once Upon a School

Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School

I wish that you -- you personally and every creative individual and organization you know -- will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area, and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have 1,000 examples of innovative public-private partnerships.

Help grant Dave Eggers' wish >>

How TED can help:

  • HOT Studio has built the first phase of a website -- www.onceuponaschool.org -- to power Dave's wish by: Providing guidelines for partnering with schools and receiving pledges and stories of involvement.
  • Scale up the site so that it includes social networking functionality (teacher/wish-granter connections), a robust tracking system for projects/ideas/stories, and the ability for metatagging and search functionality (by geography, topic, age groups, etc.).
  • Build awareness around the wish to recruit public school champions across America and maybe even beyond.
  • Build a small team at 826 National who will manage all the offers and stories coming in and manage the website itself.
  • Inspire companies and individuals to connect with their schools and ensure we will have 1,000 stories told.

Help grant Dave Eggers' wish >>

What we are looking for:

  • 1,000 people to directly engage with their local public schools
  • Domain hosting
  • A technology solution to help locate schools you can contribute to
  • A technical partner to include social networking functionality in the site
  • A technical partner to extend the robustness of the tracking system
  • Employee to manage the website, with a technical web background, and an employee to manage the pledges and stories, with a teaching background.
  • Funding
  • Marketing strategy
  • Media partners
  • PR

Help grant Dave Eggers' wish >>