It was a year ago this week that Lawrence told you about his first trip to Malawi. He went there with the hope of providing desks for Malawi classrooms, where most students have never seen a desk.
Msnbc teamed up with UNICEF to create the K.I.N.D. fund, Kids In Need of Desks, a special partnership specifically to deliver desks to African schools. And it is the permanent and beloved cause of this program.
Now, one year later, the full scale of your generosity has become very clear. As of today, the program has raised $2,413,999, to be exact. That has allowed us to deliver 39,949 desks, with more than 5,000 more in the manufacturing pipeline that will be delivered soon.
Thank you. We are so grateful for all your contributions, large and small.
Life is hard in Malawi but you don't see that on the face of the people. When our cameras returned to Malawi, kids literally sang their gratitude for how you changed their lives.
Before these desks get delivered to a classroom where they change the lives of the students, they have already changed the lives of the families of the people who make them. Those workers have jobs that didn't exist a year ago — thanks to you. Their families, their children are eating better than they were a year ago — thanks to you.
By purchasing one desk, you can provide a new and vastly improved learning environment for two or three students, and ultimately assist the community at large. For the price of a couple of movie tickets, you can lift an African student off the floor for the first time in her life. If you have any room left in your charitable giving budget this year, if there is someone on your gift list who has everything, consider giving that person the gift of one of these desks.
Visit LastWordDesks.msnbc.com to donate. You can have an email gift notice sent to anyone on your gift list for whom you would like to give the gift of a desk.