Parts and Crafts Monthly Make-It: 48 hours to go!

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Katie Gradowski

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Nov 14, 2016, 6:14:06 AM11/14/16

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Parts and Crafts Monthly Make-It: 48 hours to go!

A box of cool projects every month, shipped directly from our shop to your mailbox. Open it, build it, take it apart, make something!

Support our Kickstarter: Sign up today!

Parts and Crafts Kickstarter ends at 11:59 on Tuesday November 15. We have 48 hours to go and we need YOUR HELP to make it through this final leg! Make a pledge if you haven't already! Post it to FB or tweet about it to wider networks. Help us get the word out. And if you want to get in on kits before the Kickstarter closes, now is the time to do it!

Help us get the word out! $20K lets us start a kits program. $30K gives us a buffer to make the first round of kits that much more awesome. $40K lets us exhale and breathe a sigh of relief because HOLY COW, a large chunk of scholarships for next year are already funded. We've had an incredible run so far. Help us through the final leg!

Keep our programs accessible and affordable Building off last year’s One Lightsaber Per Child Project, The Monthly Make-It is a way to fund our outreach and accessibility efforts. Kit sales directly support work with local partner organizations -- the Welcome Project, Public Lab, Somerville Community Corporation, Freedom Connexion, Somerville Public Schools, and others. Above all, they fund sliding scale and scholarships, which are an essential tool for keeping our programs affordable and accessible for families in our wider community.

An open-source library of awesome projects
Our goal is to use these kits to build an open-source library of cool things to make and do. Kits will include real-world components with clear, easy-to-follow instructions. To help you out, we will be documenting the design and manufacturing process for each kit and making the following things available under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License:
How to build it -- both as a document and as an instructional video
How it works -- a brief explanation of concepts behind the projects
Where/how you can get the parts in the kit
How to manufacture any custom pieces
Any other important notes we have on the design
We hope that, by making the kits entirely open-source, educators and youth community leaders will be able to use our kits as a springboard for developing affordable classroom-scale projects at any budget.

Five things you can do RIGHT NOW to help our Kickstarter

Share your story on the P&C facebook page.
What's your favorite tool in the shop? Why do you like to make stuff?   What's something you didn't know how to do, that you learned how to do at P&C? If P&C has made a difference in your child's life (or yours!), tell us and share your story!

Sign up for a workshop (or sponsor a non-profit).
Have the ear of the person who plans your holiday party? Make your event that much more awesome with catapults, lightsabers, and DIY water cannons! Even better: Pick a worthy cause and sponsor a build party with an organization of your choice.

Donate a kit to a local family.
Pay it forward, make a kid's day awesome, donate a kit and give the gift of making! Parts and Crafts is working with the Somerville Homeless Coalition, the Welcome Project, and Freedom Connexion to create a shortlist of families right here in Somerville who are excited to receive kits for the holidays.

Make a pledge, get a video shout-out!
Fifteen seconds of fame! Donate $35 today and get your own personal shout-out in the credits! We're hoping to release a preliminary video for the lightsaber this week.  Dig up your best Jabba the Hut jokes and get famous on Youtube!

Tell your friends!
"A CSA for DIY!" "Education, inclusion, community." Or just straight-up "THIS PROJECT IS AWESOME AND TOTALLY DESERVES YOUR SUPPORT!" Word of mouth is the #1 most effective way to help build momentum for this project. Tweet about it, share the link on Facebook, post it to your networks, and help us get the word out during the homestretch.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far!

As of today, we are 159% funded with 223 backers who have supported this project. We are deeply humbled by the outpouring of support for this project over the last 28 days. Thank you for supporting Parts and Crafts, for keeping this project going, and for helping to get this new piece of our program off the ground.

We couldn't do it without your support! We are beyond excited about this project, but we can’t do it without you. The Monthly Make-It will help us keep our workshop open, keep our projects accessible, and help us grow our online resources to better support makers just like you. We hope you'll be a part of it!