Accomplishments and Goals 23 May 2008

I think that we've accomplished a lot as a group this week. Since we were unable to call up the airlines that Kit had researched, Kit and I (Stephen) began working on a website for The Strength of We with the help of Cameron (Special thanks to Cameron, who's not even in our group). Cameron worked on a graphic for the website, and he made a really nice looking background image. He left an area blank that we could use to insert our content. The first piece of content that I created was a slideshow of pictures taken during intersession. So currently, all we have is a webpage with a Flash slideshow nested within a picture of trees. However, it is a start.

What we have also began doing is getting the word out to people who aren't in our class or even the people that don't go to our school. Lynn already has posted a blog on her Myspace page to show all her Myspace friends what we're doing in class. This is a really useful way to get the word out, as giving the link to a webpage to one of your friends is really easy to do. I've been spreading the word about our project to people I don't even see more than once a week, but a lot of them have given me some advice as to how we should raise the money.

There's a lot we should get done within the next week or couple of weeks. Obviously, there's the issue about contacting airline companies to see if we can get any kind of special deal or discount for a round trip to Peru. I think Darrell has finally found a contact he can reach in Peru. This is good, because it enables us to do a lot of stuff, because we didn't know when the trip would take place, exactly where it would take place, and other stuff that we should probably know before going around asking for sponsoring and funding from people. Imagine asking for donations without knowing exactly what you're doing.

Another thing that we should get done is the website. That's probably one of the most important aspects of this project; without that website, it's really hard to point potential sponsors or donor to a source of information about our projects. Also, this website would be able to function as a platform to showcase other projects that the Strength of We is doing. Something that goes along with this website is a PayPal donation box, as clicking a couple things on your computer screen is much easier than manually writing a check, sticking it in an envelope, and hoping it reaches the recipient.

I really want to add some content to the website, except we haven't really bothered with that kind of stuff yet; it's too much of a hassle. So far, we've only been focusing on "does it work?" and "how does it look?" Since that's basically thought out already, we can just move on and write the actual content.

It's not time to start looking pessimistic yet, we're still in this and we can still do it!