This month’s 9dollarclub give is in the spirit of seeing kids and teachers heading back to the classroom after a very long year and half of dealing with the national pandemic. At the same time, it is also a reminder that we are all on our own journey through life and we all experience many twists and turns, times of wonderful joy and difficult pain. Perhaps the real magic in life is when we recognize the moments where our journeys intersect and we can share our happiness and help each other through the more difficult times.  One of the best parts of the 9dollarclub is when we find these moments of opportunity and look for ways to create a positive impact on other people’s journeys. Sometimes our paths seem to cross at just the right time.  

The Story

We want to introduce you to Marie Still.  Marie is an author who lives in Tampa, Florida. She is the very proud (and very busy) mother of four children and soon to be published author releasing a series of novels! In an effort to try to save some time with all of her activities going on, Marie asked her children to shop for school supplies on Amazon for the upcoming school year. After reviewing the shopping cart, Marie told them to complete the purchases. 

There was just one problem… when the kids completed the transaction, they didn’t realize they needed to change the “ship to” address.  All of the supplies were sent to the address of Marie’s last shipping address which happened to belong to a woman in Texas who previously won a book giveaway!  You can imagine this woman’s surprise when multiple shipments of school supplies were showing up at her Texas home with no clear sign of who ordered it all. 

When Marie tracked down the missing supplies, she reached out to the person, apologized for the mix up and instead of going through the process of trying to return all the items, Marie told her to keep them for her own children or donate them to a local school.  This particular person was a single mom who has actually been going through some financial difficulties and was very appreciative of the offer.  The light bulb went off of how she could help others!

Marie chronicled the serendipitous event and put together a TikTok video explaining what had happened. And wouldn’t you know it, through the magic of viral video social media, the next morning she woke up to see her video was being viewed hundreds of thousands of times.  When the views climbed over the 2 million mark she knew the opportunity was there to help other teachers.  She encouraged all teachers watching to link their “Amazon School Teacher Wishlists” in the comment section in the hopes that others may be inspired to help a teacher in a similar way she was able to help her fan. You can see her page here. 

What Did We Give?

As a result of that video, Marie received more than 300 links from teachers all over the country! After hearing Marie's story of trying to connect people and help teachers fulfill their wishlists, we reached out to introduce the 9dollarclub and learn more about her incredible story.  We thought it would be an honor to work with someone making such a big effort to help others, specifically teachers. Unfortunately, it is very common that teachers have to spend their own money collecting many of the supplies and tools they need for their classrooms.   

One of the links Marie received was from Stephanie Carmen of Chesapeake, Virginia.  Ms. Carmen has been teaching for 7 years now and after she spent most of that time with her second grade class, this year has been moved to 3rd grade.  A well respected teacher, Ms. Carmen won a Teacher of the Year Award in 2019, proof of her deep dedication to her students, school and community.  Stephanie’s journey has been through some very difficult times and is a recent domestic abuse survivor. She has accepted the challenge of putting the pieces back together again and talks publicly about her experiences to bring more attention to the very serious issue of domestic abuse.          

We had the opportunity to meet with both Marie Still and Stephanie Carmen on a zoom call. It was in that exact moment where all of our journeys crossed paths and provided us the wonderful opportunity to help not just Ms. Carmen, but ultimately help impact all of her students as well. 

After listening to Marie’s incredible story of how a simple mistake on shipping some items purchased from Amazon became a viral TikTok video now seen by more than 2.7 million people and meeting the inspiring Ms. Carmen who through even the most difficult of times remains deeply dedicated to her students, the 9dollarclub has purchased every item on Ms. Carmen’s Amazon Wishlist to make sure she has everything she needs to start her third grade class this year.  We invite you to take a moment to watch a video that captures our Zoom conversation. 

We are humbled to be able to participate and we wish Marie and Stephanie all the best!  Thank you to all of our club members for their continued support!  Without you, meeting and helping a very deserving teacher like Ms. Carmen would not be possible.

Please watch the touching video below and follow us to watch for future updates!