The writing's on the card |
| Posted: 11 Sep 2010 08:11 AM PDT Posted By KATE SCHWASS-BUECKERT, QMI AGENCYPosted 2 hours agoSome may say the written word is dead. Those people clearly haven't discovered postcrossing. With more than 200,000 members in 209 countries, to deliver this project aims complete postcards from the world strangers all over to each other's front doors. "Receiving postcards always lit my day, and made mailbox a my visits to the lot more interesting," says founder Paulo Magalhaes. "Knowing a fact that there were more people that enjoyed receiving postcards from far away, the idea of how to match them across the world came up." He launched the website on July 1, 2005 while finishing a computer science and a systems engineering degree. Now, just a little more than five years later, postcrossers have passed the five million postcard sent milestone. Louise Jolly joined up just a month after Magalhaes started the website and says she feels a bit like the ambassador of Postcrossing for Canada. "It's amazing to see how postcrossing has grown in five years," she said, noting when she began, there were just 443 users in 25 countries. Now, postcards leaving this country number almost 200,000. Jolly, who lives near Kawartha Lakes, Ont. holds the title of having sent the most postcards in Canada (more than 1,400) and says postcrossing allows you to "travel anywhere in the world right from your own home." "I think being No. 1 comes with a certain amount of responsibility to represent our country well by being timely, informative and polite," Jolly says. Like Jolly, Marian Munro from Halifax has picked up the hobby. Munro has collected vintage postcards for more than 30 years and a friend told the museum curator about postcrossing. She signed up more than two years ago. "I realized that this could be a fun way to ensure there are lots of vintage postcards for my son, by sending and receiving them worldwide," she says. Munro has sent more than 375 postcards, and says she budgets $50 every two weeks for stamps. While most people sign up for Postcrossing as a hobby, Magalhaes said a number of people use postcrossing for education. "In schools, teachers -- or parents in homeschooling -- are using postcrossing in creative ways as a teaching tool. "Postcards coming from far away make kids interested in geography, English and even other cultures and societies. Its randomness helps in learning about places that might not be so common in textbooks too," he explains. Mardi Desjardins of Winnipeg thinks postcrossing is also giving her an education. "I am learning things about our world and its people. I have at least heard the names of most countries of the world but have little knowledge of what many of them are like or what the history of those places is. "More than once, I have received a card that has sent me on a little research mission to learn a bit more about something the card told me about," she says. Magalhaes still sends and receives cards, and he says only some people recognize it's him on the other end of the postcard. "I receive a lot of postcards -- many members mail me just to thank for the project: It's a great community! Some people that get my address in postcrossing recognize my account, but others don't -- I enjoy it either way," he says. As for a favourite, Magalhaes says "every postcard is special" and it's not just about the image on the front. "It's what the person wrote, the stamp, where it came from and the distance it crossed to reach me," he says. - - - Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall stop this hobby Postcrossing has become a worldwide project. Overall there are 210,675 members across 209 countries, mailing 499 postcards every hour. Their postcards have travelled 28,070,621,862 km-- that's 700,452 laps around the world. Here are some of the 209 countries that are involved and how many users they currently have: U.S.A. -35,039 China -20,907 Germany -14,988 Finland -12,687 Russia -12,607 Taiwan -12,169 Brazil -6,946 United Kingdom -6,285 Canada -4,178 Australia -3,679 Belarus -3,451 France -3,180 Italy -1,732 Argentina -1,409 Sweden -700 Mexico -602 Lebanon -13 Afghanistan -10 Haiti -2 Soloman Islands -1
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