Teetering.

Last night, we went from third to fourth. So Mike and I invited and recruited some people and got us back to third.

Then we went from third to fourth again. George Washington has probably been saving up all their points to spring forward at the last minute like this. Mike and I submitted more stuff...

and I woke up and we were third again. We're only ahead by 2,000 points, so we need to jump on it.

I talked to three people about their trips abroad and had them submit statements...the statements are now in this blog and have been submitted. I still have one person I want to talk to...Angie Lauver went to Kenya and I'd love to get that story.

More later!

Study Abroad Story 3

Statement of Rachel Stevens

Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio

For the past four years, I have gone to the Dominican Republic for two weeks of my winter vacation. I spend half of each January working with orphaned children. I live with a Dominican family, and I work in a small mountain town called Jarabacoa. I’ll describe my typical week.

Three days a week, we do construction work. Then we work with orphans in sort of a “vacation Bible school” setting. The other two days a week, we work with kids from the street who don’t have a place to live. Even though I don’t speak much Spanish and they don’t speak English, their smiles say everything. Their whole faces light up when we come in to talk with them and teach them a little of what we know.

Working in the DR taught me so much about how we take so many things for granted in the US. Walking through the grocery store with my Dominican family, the lights would just go out, and it was no big deal for them. When taking a shower, it was either really hot or really cold, and once I had to shower using only a bucket. Some mornings there was no electricity. We ate whatever we had for breakfast; it was mostly rice and hot dogs.

I realized how different our worlds were when, after returning home from working with the orphans, my Dominican sister said that we were “back to civilization.” That really hit it home for me; the US is so much more modernized than a lot of the world. We take little things for granted all the time, and we need to step back and think about other people in the world and what they consider “civilized” living.

Study Abroad Story 2

Statement of Chris Jones

Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio

Last summer, I went to Mexico with a group of students from my Spanish class. It was a great trip; we visited a bunch of beaches, traveled to different parts of Mexico, partied a little, tried the local fare, and made friends with a burro vendor on the corner. We walked all over the place. We stayed for six weeks and took classes for college credit (that is the point of studying abroad, after all), but aside from that, we had some really cool experiences that just aren’t that common in the US.

We went with a group and taught some orphans some English and played games with them. They weren’t terribly disadvantaged, but I still felt bad for them. I’m still working on writing a letter to keep in touch with them. On the negative side of things, I did get some things stolen from me, and I got acquainted with the Mexican penal system.

In wondering whether or not Mexico changed the way I feel about being from the US, the answer is yes. Spending six weeks in Mexico dramatically increased my appreciation for our police force. It also made me very happy that we don't use concrete as a universal construction material. Spending the time in Mexico also aided me in knowing what it felt like to be a minority in a country where you don't speak a language fluently and you're afraid that everyone is out to get you. People in the United States don’t usually understand that concept. My trip to Mexico helped me see how privileged I really am to live here.

Study Abroad Story

Statement of Abbey Pratt-Harrington

Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio

In Summer 2007, I traveled to Nicaragua with my Spanish professor. We stayed with a Nicaraguan family. Their house did not have a floor or plumbing, and we had to walk past a very aggressive pig on our way to the outhouse. The family had a tiny TV with terrible reception, and they watched American movies. They had a wood stove. One morning, I woke to the sound of a pig being slaughtered next door, and chickens would just wander in and out of the house. The adventures didn’t stop in the house, though.

We went out and met with children who lived in a huge garbage dump. Their houses were made out of anything their families could find, and they used glue to curb their hunger pains. We went to a women’s clinic where women are taught about birth control and AIDS, and children could receive medical checkups. We saw the Maternity House, where women could go to have their babies safely if they were at risk for pregnancy complications. We traveled a lot on our two-week trip in Nicaragua; I can’t even remember all of it.

After spending time in Nicaragua, I am so thankful for all the privileges I receive by being in the United States. I feel so sad that there are children living in dumps. I can’t even imagine growing up like they do and never knowing anything else. What really surprised me was how nice the people were. They were giving and sharing, even though they didn’t have much. The women who worked in the clinic worked for free. I was amazed by the altruism of the Nicaraguan community, and I wish we could bring some of that spirit to the US.

LTEs

After some 85 letters to the editor we generated, we're well positioned at #3. April really does not want to slip.

We have a meeting tonight, so I'll post the minutes this evening :)

Lots of fun plans in the works!!

Kickin' it up a notch.

April's freaking out because George Washington University came out of nowhere and is now closely trailing us at #4. We might falter a little bit this week. It's a huge blow that Weekly Challenges are now worth 50,000 points, because if #4 or #5 gets one, we get blown away. It's a little depressing. We're planning a dorm storm to be submitted for at least 30,000 points - knocking on every single door on campus and asking if people have signed up for the ONE Campus Challenge yet.

More tomorrow after our meeting.

Benefit and Dorm Storm

I've got the Quaker meetinghouse booked for our mini-benefit on February 13th! I'm so excited. I'll have flyers out this week - maybe even today! All we're going to charge for admission is a valid email address so we can sign people up for the ONE Campus Challenge!

I also had a thought about going door to door in the dorms asking people for their email addresses. We could submit it for 20,000 points, because it's like a list-serv, but more intense. They can't click "delete" on a person =)

A New Week

Meeting minutes:

ONE Chapter Meeting
Monday, January 28, 2008
6:00pm @ CSCE

Special event – Happy birthday Milyda!

Ranking – 270,620 points and 219 recruits; we need everyone to participate – if you haven’t done something for us, do something!

Battle of the ONE Bands – Concert tentatively scheduled for 2/13 @ 6:00pm. It’s during RAK Week – let’s promote it! We’re working on getting it in the Quaker Meeting House.

Trustee Dinner – We practiced, practiced, practiced! We met with the Trustees last Friday night in front of some 45 audience members. It was great! April is meeting with Sigrid this week to write up a proclamation of WC as a ONE Campus. Dan is meeting with a congressman and he’s willing to take some ONE information with him and put a ONE band on some congressmen!

Individual project updates – the weekly challenge this week is an educational activity. It can be a powerpoint, a game. If we can solidify a date and time tonight – we need publicity for an event out TOMORROW.

8:30pm Thursday: Caitlin Reed, Arin, Caitlin Ryan

Brainstorm: quiz bowl, poverty-related board games (The Game of Life: Poverty Edition; Povertyopoly) – prizes? Raffle tickets, bookmarks, ONE bands.

Someone needs to check with the PRC and see if we have sold any bookmarks.

Reporting – let’s all go over to the computer for a tutorial on how to log a ONE activity.

Heifer International – We are sending out letters to all organizations – we are hoping to get support and donations. It’s worth 1600 points.

We are going to upload everything that was backlogged from April and Arin.

Recruits

We're up to 214 recruits! We have a meeting tomorrow at 6:00pm, so I'll have more updates then.

Trustee Dinner

WOW!!! The dinner with the Trustees was absolutely amazing. Our presentation went really well, and the audience asked a lot of questions. It looks like we might even be getting named a ONE Campus tomorrow! After the presentation, we actually had one person text to join the ONE Campus Challenge! (That reminds me, I want to go look at our OCC page...) We haven't had any new recruits show up on our page yet. We're at 208 as of tonight. I will check back in the morning and see what's happened! I AM SO EXCITED.

We did a great job, and doing this work has prompted me to want to apply for the ONE Coordinator position on SLEB, as I will probably be applying for President of the ONE Chapter.

Practice makes perfect

We were at the office this morning at 7:00 to run through our presentation again. This time it went a lot more smoothly. We trimmed it down so that we fit into a twenty-minute presentation, but we have to get it to even less. The presentation should be twenty minutes including Q&A. I'm pretty excited about it. Everyone else is nervous, but I feel great. We're meeting again at 4:00pm to run through it with the actual screen set up where we'll be presenting and eating dinner.

We're still 3rd!

Third Place

We are currently in 3rd place! If this were the Olympics, we would have the bronze medal!

We met for an hour and twenty minutes to go over our presentation to the Trustees tomorrow, and while it was a horrible trainwreck of a practice, we certainly have pointers to go over to be perfect by tomorrow.

That's all we really have going on at the moment...everything else is on hold so we can get through this dinner.

Benefit concert

One of the ways to get points for the ONE Campus Challenge is to host a "Battle of the ONE Bands." What I'm proposing isn't exactly that, but it's music-related. Here's the quote from the ONE Points list:

"Description: Arrange a performance of campus and local bands. Try to keep the cost low and make part of the price joining the ONE Campus Challenge."

What I'm planning to do is just arrange it like we do our other benefit concerts. There will be choral performances as well as solos and duets. It says "campus and local bands," but I think that having campus and local singers of any sort should be good!

Two songs my choir already knows are "Bambelela," which means "Never give up," and is a commonly-used song in AIDS awareness performances, and "It's A New World," which speaks about changing the world to be the way we want it.

I also want to sing John Lennon's "Imagine," because I saw it done once with a slideshow running behind the singer showing images of MLK, and war scenes, and happy scenes, and all this fun stuff that makes people cry.

I'm going to do some research on possible songs, and we'll have a "donations and signups" style admissions process. We'll also have a ONE Table to count as on-campus tabling.

I'm going to talk to Cathy Roma (Choir director) about it very VERY soon.

First meeting

We had our first meeting of the semester tonight! Here are the minutes :)

ONE Chapter Meeting
Wednesday, Jan 23, 2008, 6:00pm
Center for Service and Civic Engagement

Minutes

We’re ranked #4, mainly thanks to Bri Rogers working with Barb Kaplan to get us a list of every student on campus’s email address.

Trustee Dinner – Caitlin, April, Arin, Milyda, Lindsay Storck presenting. We will meet at 4:30pm on Thursday, January 24 to discuss who will speak about which part of the presentation.

Power 100 – It was awesome! It took place Jan 2-5^th in DC and April got us 1000 pts for going. We have administrative support like no one else does. Their leaders aren’t doing anything that we aren’t, except that Brandeis did a phone bank for the “On the Record” challenge. For letter-writing campaigns, we could make a simple letter and hand-write ten per member of the Chapter, and have it signed by students.

We’re doing Heifer International – we get points for any project with a ONE partner, regardless of tabling.

ONE Sweatshirt raffle – we have a Women’s XL sweatshirt ($40 online). We could try to raffle it at a sporting event and sell tickets for $2/ticket.

Shirts from ONE - If we order 20 shirts, they’re $6 each ($15 online). We need the tax ID number so we can order them.

Upcoming weekly challenges –

Now—1/28: Recruit

Individually ask your professors!!

1/28—2/4: Best educational project

Part of our Trustee Dinner will count; something we can use many times

2/4—2/11: Best off-campus project

Working with Tony on a “Game of Life” idea w/ life in impoverished countries – can use stories from Oxfam Hunger Banquet – include other organizations to help (International club, BSI) – possible venue? Maybe Sugartree, HS (youth outreach)

2/11—2/18: Put your skills to work

Campus-wide emails – April has a list of all campus emails and she has been inviting people and our numbers are increasing!

We need to table in Pyle for some more points. We will set up a schedule at Monday’s meeting.

Officer/member duties: Ideas and follow through – we want everyone to help in the planning and projection of our activities, we want the work to be more balanced.

Possibilities:

Float contest put on by Sodexho. Jonna Sibole will talk to Janet to approve the event. It would be a “mini-float” project, and people could vote on the best one.

Caitlin will work with Cathy Roma to put on a ONE Benefit concert – hopeful date 2/13 or 2/20 – NEED BY FEB 24 (DEADLINE)

Maybe...

Once the points from the mayor's proclamation hit, we should be in third place. It's so exciting!

In other news, I wrote an OTM for April Bentley's work on the ONE Campaign and attendance to the Power 100 Summit.

April also sent a mass email to every student at WC, for a huge amount of points.

...maybe we could really win this.

Latest news

Latest news: members of the WC ONE Chapter will be meeting with Randy Sarvis to put a press release about the ONE Campaign into a local Wilmington paper. Sweet! We're currently working out a time to meet with him that works for all (or most) of us. Caitlin Ryan should still be putting something in her local papers, since she has connections ;)

I'm an intern this semester at the Center for Service and Civic Engagement, and I'll be working to incorporate service learning into classes within the social science department - ONE fits great there =]

Scootin' along.

Hey hey! We had a quick meeting this afternoon to discuss the presentation we'll be giving to the Board of Trustees. The powerpoint has to be submitted by Monday so that everyone can proofread it and check it before its presentation at the dinner on Friday, January 25th.

It should be super cool. We're submitting it as one of those "make your own point value" activities. Since getting the Board of Trustees is not an easy feat, we're shooting pretty high point-wise. I'm not sure what April's gonna go for, though. We'll have to wait and see.

We're 2nd in the "most points this week" rankings, but still maintaining 4th in the overall rankings. When our Trustee points hit, along with the mayor's proclamation that Wilmington is a city of ONE, we're gonna be shooting right along.

More info to come!

Back from break

Welcome back from break! We're back and today is the 2nd day of classes for Spring semester '08. Over break, April attended the Power 100 Summit, and I'll get some info in here about that shortly.

We are now FOURTH in the standings. We maintained a steady 5th place all during winter break.

Our meetings start up tomorrow night, and they will be held each Monday and Wednesday evening at 6:00pm.

More info to come! We're working on some great ideas!

PS. We were selected to present to the Board of Trustees - that's a HARD thing to do! They only meet a few times a year!