Dream Corps Wins $20,000 in Donation Though Couchange in Twitter Competition

Remember the twit that we have asked you to help spread around? Now you will learn what became of it. 

The TWITCH contest, or Twitter Pitch, is part of the $100K MIT Entrepreneurship Competition. A $500 cash prize is awarded to the organizer who sends the most retwitted and the most creative message. 

The social venture startup Couchange , an organization that develops innovative fundraising technologies to help nonprofits access over $8 billion dollars annually in abandoned assets such as leftover giftcards, frequent flier miles, and other reward point currencies, won the competition and donated their $500 prize to Dream Corps. 

This $500 is matched personally by Jia Ji, the CEO of Couchange. After hearing that Couchange was donating the MIT100K prize money to charity and that Jia Ji promised to match the MIT100K donation, Paul Fireman of the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation raised the contribution to $20,000. 

We are very grateful of Jia Ji, Pian Shu, and Meng Yan, the wonderful people at Couchange who catalyzed the event and collaborated with Dream Corps to raise awareness on education equity in rural China. A big thank you goes to Mr. Fireman for his most generous donation, which will bring about much good work.

We also want to thank the many twitters who helped Couchange and Dream Corps win by retweeting and voting for Dream Corps. Through their help, we reached a total of 60,000 followers and generated retweets from across the United States, Europe and Asia. Thank you!

Dear readers, please follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/dreamcorps) if you haven't done so. This way we'll be able to communicate the latest news to you as they happen. The following month is bound to be eventful, since our summer volunteer program is starting on May 23rd, 2010. See you then!

不久之前，我们号召大家在Twitter上帮我们转发一条信息。今天有好消息告诉大家。

TWITCH，又称 Twitter Pitch （推特推销），是 MIT 10万美元创业大赛中的一个项目。所有参投者中，标语被转发次数最多的，标语最有特色的就可以得到500美元的现金奖。Couchange是一家初创的社会企业，致力于发展独辟蹊径的筹款技术，让公益组织们可以利用每年流失高达到80亿美元的礼物卡、累积飞行里程、以及其他奖励点货币。Couchange赢得了TWITCH比赛，并把500美元奖金捐献给他们支持的非营利组织中得到最多“转推”（retwit）的梦想行动国际。Couchange的CEO吉佳先生同时决定以个人名义捐献500美元。得知吉佳的这一义举之后，Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation的主席Paul Fireman先生当场表示愿意把捐款总数升为20000美元。

我们十分感谢Couchange那些可爱的人们：吉佳、舒翩和闫梦，你们的努力将帮助梦想行动向着我们的目标——让所有孩子都能读上好书——更进一步。我们同时感谢Fireman先生慷慨解囊。这笔捐款将被用在最需要的地方。我们还要感谢所有帮助Couchange和梦想行动转推及投票给我们的twitterers——所有推友们。通过你们，我们向美国、欧洲及亚洲一共6万多名网友传达了我们的信息。谢谢大家！

亲爱的读者们，如果你们还没有在推特上关注梦想行动的话，现在就可以猛击这里（http://twitter.com/dreamcorps）。通过这个平台，我们将不断发布关于梦想行动的新闻。2010年的暑期志愿者项目马上就要开始了。5月23日，来自各地的志愿者和图书管理员、老师们将同聚一堂。我们期待着那一天的到来。