Today we received the name of our charities; my group got the Sacramento Children's home. This decision brought me joy. I enjoy working with children. I have some prior knowledge of working with children since I volunteer with kids on Sundays at church. This project is giving the opportunity of working with kids but in a different setting.
10/23 Wednesday
We had the opportunity to research our charity and practice calling the organization. Researching more information and upcoming events for our organization gave us ideas on what we could possibly help with. I found a tea party event they are having in December, as a fundraiser to collect teddy bears. This event got my attention because I enjoy having tea parties.
10/25 Friday
Today we made our first attempt at calling the facilities. The Receptionist answered but this attempt was not successful. We did not discover any useful information. But we did leave a message with the request of call back. One of the group members took the task of emailing the children’s home. The email just stated our request for a visit and a reason behind it. We are hoping we get a response in the next couple days.
10/28 Monday
In the groups we all got individual assignments, this way the work was evenly distributed. My part consisted of coming up and conducting the interviews. The requirements for the project are at least two interviews. I plan on interviewing a child from the facilities and a volunteer. The purpose for the interviews is to get a better understanding of the kind of life the kids live in the facilities. For the volunteers, to get a reason for why they volunteer, what are their motives?
10/29 Tuesday
We have waited 4 days for a call back from the Sacramento Children's home, but still have not received a response. Today we will try calling again, this attempt was also not very successful, but we got the opportunity to leave a message for one of the administrators. We are hoping to hear back from the administrators very soon. This is our last attempt at trying to get a day for a site visit. We are presenting on November 8th which gives us, 8 days to work on a successful video and website.
10/30 Wednesday
I have been working on coming up with good interview questions, I have a starting point for a children’s interview. My strategy is to make them my friend at first. This way they feel comfortable talking to me and answering my questions. For the volunteers I will be giving them facts that I know about the facilities to show my interest in the facilities.
10/31 Thursday
I attended a workshop on how to conduct appropriate interviews. I am pretty confident with my interview questions; I have a purpose behind each question. Today we received an email that said we cannot volunteer with the children due to their privacy. This has become a very big hurdle for the group. We have decided to have an over the phone interview with an administrator. Also we will be contributing to the Sacramento Children's Home wish list.
11/01 Friday
We cannot have a teddy bear drive because the kids at the children’s home are too old for teddy bears. So instead we have planned to have a gardening tool drive. The children have a garden, that they enjoy working on.
11/04 Monday
Today in our group meeting, we decided to expand the drive of donations that we will have. We are using the wish list that was emailed to us; with that list we can email advisors and create an advisory competition to see who can collect the most items on the list. The winning advisory wins a bucket of Red Vines. The wish list consists of many easy to get household items.
11/07 Thursday
Two days after getting the word out about our Holiday drive, we have only received donations from Ms.Kennedy. Tomorrow is the day we have set to drop off the donations. As a group we have decided for each one of us to donate supplies, that way we can have more items. We are still hoping to collect more donations. This drive is going to make up for us not being able to do a site visit.