Archive:Stories: Difference between revisions

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+{{cquote|As I was writing my check to the Wikimedia Foundation I was thinking about the other very worthwhile organizations that could use my small donation this holiday season. I was laid off in June and am launching my own business and I thought about what brought me to Wikipedia today...I was looking up "XML Paper Specification." Then I thought about the hundreds of times I have used Wikipedia in the past and the “sometimes brief/sometimes in depth” information I have been able garner from its massive resources.
+It's funny when I was growing up my mom bought my brother and me the World Book Encyclopedia and every year for many years bought the annual update. She started when we were in elementary school. She is 83 now and just the other day I told her how much I appreciated that she had done that. It was so nice to have that type of reference in our home. My brother and I used it for so many school projects and I can remember using it almost reverently.
+Today, everything is a Google away, but I can say that Wikipedia is one of my first points of research, just as the World Book was when I was growing up. For this reason when I clicked on the "Important Message from Jimmy Wales" and saw his story about how Wikipedia came about and his philosophy, I felt that donating to The Wikimedia Foundation was as important as any of the "other worthwhile organizations" that had crossed my mind. After all knowledge feeds the soul! That is also why I decided that I should share my story of "What Wikipedia means to me." }}
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 {{cquote|I am the last hope and dream of a man who struggles in a foreign land.
 My father, Jose Paz, grew up with his uncle’s family in El Salvador. To them he was another mouth to feed—they fed him like a dog with scraps and leftovers. Still, he has never forgotten what he considered their kindness. He understands that they could have left him to be an orphan in the streets, that they chose to sustain him as an act of generosity. Sometimes he was so hungry that he would venture out into the forests around Suchitoto looking for fruit to eat.