Postcrossing Blog

Remember some years ago, when a class of students in Tuvalu sent postcards to raise awareness for the plight of their tiny country?

Well, they’re at it again! This year’s project is called “We are One”. Emily (aka emilytao), the volunteer who is helping the children on this project, explains the concept:

"Being one of the smallest and most remote nations in the world, it’s easy to miss out Tuvalu on the map. Through postcard exchanging, we wish to make this island country more known to the world; hence the idea of “We Are One Project” was born, which aims to connect Funafuti’s (the capital island) Primary School children with postcrossers from all over the world. Students will benefit from writing postcards in English, further motivating them to become better writers… or simply to have more enthusiasm in learning English!

Once we receive postcards, students will be assigned to do studies and research on different country’s unique culture or history. They will be amazed at the fact how big the world is; bigger than they had thought, beyond the skyline of coconut trees and the sea.

Through this project, we hope to help our children be more connected with the rest of the world, and understand that we are all part of it, for better or worse, WE ARE ONE WORLD. "

How wonderful is that? :) They’re planning to send around 400 postcards, and the first ones are already on their way! If you’re lucky, you might receive or send one to them!

Oh! And if you didn’t know where Tuvalu is, or want to learn more about this Polynesian island nation, don’t forget to check out their page on Wikipedia.

PS – We know that Tuvalu is a “rare” country, but Emily and the children won’t be able to engage in direct swaps for the duration of the project. So please respect their choice, and don’t contact them requesting for swaps.

Earlier in February this year, we asked you to send some postcards to a school in Guimarães (Portugal), whose students were working on a European Capital of Culture project. They’ve received an avalanche of cards from all over the world – so many that they decided to do several postcard-mosaics instead of a single one! :)

As you can see, the mosaics were displayed in several windows of the school, so that the postcards were easily accessible from both sides. The project was very well received – so much so that it is still being displayed, months after it’s conclusion date!

You can see the four mosaics below (click for bigger images):

Did you spot your postcard? :)

The students have also made thank-you postcards themselves, which they’ve sent back to some of the senders during their English classes.

A big congratulations to the students and teachers of the Escola Secundária Martins Sarmento, and a huge thank you (from them and us) to all the postcrossers who sent a card to this school!

Recently, Postcrossing has been featured in some very interesting scientific essays, focused on the study of people interaction through communications. Today we’d like to share with you one of these papers.

Ryan and Daniel are PhD students in Computer Science at the University of Bath, United Kingdom. Both are interested in how people interact with, and through, information technologies. Daniel’s PhD research looks at support for intimate communication between people in long-distance relationships. Ryan’s research is about understanding fairness in collaborative work tasks, and he has been a postcrosser since March 2011.

Ryan writes:

"The inspiration for our research came back in June 2011. We were interested in learning why people enjoy using Postcrossing, and what they value about correspondence through postcards. We hoped that such knowledge might allow us to derive some design criteria to help improve digital communication systems.

Many of the things we found in our study relate to the treasured elements of paper-based correspondence that are lost during digitisation. For example, we found that people value things like stamps, postmarks, wear and tear from travelling, as well as personalised postcards. We also found that people love the random aspects of Postcrossing: not knowing what you’ll receive, who it will be from, or from where it will come. These are the things we believe could be useful in certain digital technologies, and we are currently developing ways to use our design criteria to build new systems that help to connect people together.

One of the other things we found, but didn’t have space to write about in the paper, is linked to reciprocity – the expectation that others will treat us as we treat them, and will respond to our actions in kind. From reading our survey responses, people said they loved knowing that recipients enjoyed their postcards, but what we also observed was a clear dislike for empty 'thank you’ messages in the hurray email. This tells us that, even though Postcrossing encounters are essentially one-off experiences, we still expect others to treat us in kind and to thank us for our efforts. People don’t like it when the norm of reciprocity is broken, even in a setting where it seems like it might not matter all that much.

In the future, we hope to do more studies involving Postcrossing, and we hope to look at other practices like online pen-palling and use of christmas cards. These will give us new ideas about how to link digital and physical technologies."

Very interesting results – thank you Ryan and Daniel! If you want to read more, you can download a free copy of the paper from Ryan’s publications page at: http://people.bath.ac.uk/rmk22/RyanKellyWebsite/Publications.html

They say Guimarães is the place where Portugal was born, the cradle of the nation. This small city in the north of the country has a lot to offer and is this year’s European Capital of Culture (along with Maribor in Slovenia).

The students and teachers from the local secondary school “Martins Sarmento” in Guimarães want to involve Postcrossing in the celebrations. Their idea is to build a heart-shaped mosaic resembling the logo of the European Capital of Culture.

And for that of course, they need your help! The school invites all postcrossers to send a postcard until March 9th to the following address:

Escola Secundária Martins Sarmento
A/C Cristiana Cerdeira
Alameda Prof. Abel Salazar
4810–247 Guimarães
Portugal

You can write a personal message, your thoughts on Guimarães or just “I am part of it!”.

Write your e-mail address as well: you’ll receive an e-mail from them with a picture of the finished mosaic. The first 20 postcards received will also receive a postcard from the European Capital of Culture.

The students from the school “Martins Sarmento” thank you for your collaboration, and welcome you into their city!

From time to time we get requests to help many different causes by spreading the word about them. While we would like to help them all, that is not always possible. However, today one of our members brought to our attention something particularly touching and we had to share it with you all.

Here’s a text about it that explains it much better than we can:

“I am a fifth grade teacher in London, Ohio, and one of my most sincere and joyous students, Reagyn, has a brain tumor. It is now in stage three, and her family is being forced to move to Virginia for a few months so she can receive proton radiation from one of the best doctors in the country. Reagyn remains optimistic and spreads positive energy everywhere she goes. She helps others and puts everyone before herself. In fact, last week she headed a school wide campaign to start saving pop tabs so that Ronald McDonald would visit Children’s Hospital in Columbus. Needless to say, there are a few thousand pop tabs already. Recently, we had a conversation about what she collects, and she said nothing, well except for SillyBandz; but what fifth grader doesn’t? Then I asked her what she has always wanted to collect but never got the opportunity. She told me she wished she could receive ”postcards from all over the world." Let’s make this happen!

This is where my favor comes into play. We are asking anybody and everybody to send a little note of support and/or telling her something about your location on a POSTCARD. My entire class and our wonderful secretaries are helping Reagyn fulfill this dream. Please, please pass this email on to everyone you know. It would make a huge difference in Reagyn’s life. She received her first postcard today from London, England!

She now has her own website at www.reagynsworld.weebly.com. Feel free to leave her a short blog of support on her website.

All postcards can be sent to London Elementary at:

Reagyn Semler
c/o London Elementary
380 Elm Street
London, Ohio 43140
United States of America

Thank you for your support!
Chad Reeser
5th grade teacher
London Elementary School"

I don’t think there’s a better match than cards from Postcrossers for someone who wishes to receive postcards from all over the world! Grab a postcard and send her a bold Happy Postcrossing! Tell her about you location and make her smile! That’s it! As simple as a postcard.

Note: We want to underline that this is a request for postcards only. Please do not send any money – only postcards are being asked for. They also request for postcards to not be on envelopes so that it’s easier for Reagyn to go through all of them.