The Technology Student Association (TSA) teams at Ithaca High School and DeWitt Middle School are working hard to be able to attend the TSA national conference in Dallas, TX, but we need your help! At the conference, we're slated to compete in STEM-related activities against thousands of top students from the United States and other countries. Your support will play a critical role this year.

We just made an excellent showing at our state level, winning 31 awards all told—and our history of success at the state and national level goes back a lot farther. The goal of national competition drives us to devote significant after-school time every week to activities like fabricating balsa wood gliders, video game development, multimedia production, website creation, building robots, and much more. Both teams are student-run (with support from our schools’ technology engineering teachers), and we learn a great deal that goes far beyond what can be taught in a classroom.

However, the costs associated with sending 30 of us and our advisers to the TSA national conference can be prohibitively expensive. This is where you come in! Any amount you can donate, no matter how small, will help make this amazing opportunity for us possible. Even a $5 donation will make a positive impact. All the money raised goes toward defraying the costs equally, since the goal is for everyone in TSA to be able to compete, regardless of their financial situation.

Take a moment and think about what being able to compete in a national competition means for us—we've worked all year to prepare. Now we just need your help to get there.

Thanks for your support, and thanks to Ithaca STEM Advocates and IPEI for making this campaign possible, and for making it so all contributions are fully tax-deductible.