Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- "V. Ivanov" amikeco@gmail.com wrote:
I've shawn the Wikipedia project to my students yesterday (its Russian part mostly). And one of the students asked me: "But how do they expect to collect the huge money? Who will pay 75000?!" :) Now at the next lesson I can show him the result: one pessimist off. :)
Tell them 'the same way it is written: a great many small efforts with some larger efforts mixed-in'. There is *no* way we could have reached our fund drive goal without all the smaller donations. Every little bit counted.
This is not the whole truth. For economically less developed countries such as Russia, or heavily taxed countries such as Sweden, this amount of voluntary fundraising (per capita) is uncommon. In Russia, the common question might be "does so much money even exist?" and in Sweden the common question would be "I paid all my money in taxes, so why doesn't the government pay for this?" (The idea, right or wrong, that the government does spend its money wisely is very common here, otherwise the high level of taxation would never work.) The students in St Petersburg should be glad that they are invited to an open potluck party, where some people bring money and other people bring their brains.