Need ideas and your help!

well, first let me introduce to you all what i do. At school, Im part of a service-learning/philanthropy council(which comprises of 6 students including me and 3 college professors). It's basically a program i do that helps my community and improving it. We were given a grant of $7500 at the beginning of the year. We have given $3500 for people who have requested to have the money so they can fund their programs that will help our town. We kept the other half of the money to do our own project. Problem is because we've been so busy with our trip to california, doing the whole RFP(request for proposal) process with giving out the money, and other things, that we've had almost no time to develop our project. So now we have about 2 months to plan our project and to actually do it before the grant expires and the remaining money will be taken away. For this week, we(the council) have been assigned to go out and research some ideas and then friday we will share and decide.

What I'm asking from you all are ideas for our project. Something plausible and do-able within a 2 months time. None of you know my town and its geography so I'm not expecting details. Just some ideas that might better my community.

Here are some examples:
-Make a Mural/Riverwalk. We have a river running through the town and so we were going to pick a place, spiff it up, make it all nice, and set up an empty mural. Get some residents and artists from the town and to draw a picture of what they think of our town(or something like that) and then collage them all together. We WERE going to do this one but chose not to anymore since someone else is doing it now :|
-Clean up an abandoned park/hill/ski hill
-Fund an event that will take place or make one(of what, I don't know)
etc.

Now, I need to get everything together for friday, so thursday night will be the last day I will be able to come here and gather everyone's ideas. When we decide(which SHOULD be friday, i'll tell you guys what we've decided on :)). Any ideas or help is greatly appreciated guys !

oooh that mural project sounds pretty cool, too bad it's taken :(

is there an abandoned park in your town? if so, you can spice that up, add benches, clean it up, playset, etc...

Yeah but if you do what jessica said, put some hidden things on the playset, like spikes on the slide (small but pointing up) and pepper spray surprised too. ya know the normal stuff.

omg playground of toutre ...youcould have bear traps in the sandbox!!!!

anyway what about something with old people.....everyoe loves old people there are just SO CUTE.

I made up some things but they are either too expensive or take too much time lol, I'll think some more on this lol.

Just how big is your town, really? And is there any specific target group? Like kids, youngsters, adults, or all of them?

Build some grass on some dirt or something.

Check out your local Habitat for Humanity chapter or a campus affiliate. They're always needing more funds and extra hands. You could combine efforts. There could be a building blitz going on right now in your area, since they usually coincide with spring breaks so they can get more student volunteers.

Local Habitat Affiliates for Massachusetts
Habitat for Humanity - Greater Boston
Boston Building project that begins this June

Helping to put an end to substandard housing is one if the best things you can do for your community.

Why dont you clean up an abaonded oepn space or somethign and then host a sundy arts and crafts day for sineors and little kids or somethig like that. Maby have some music and some fun little projects to teach someone something...

The arts and crafts projects can be all about careing ofr the environment. YOu ocudl plant small plants wiht the kids and they can color and cutout stuff about trees and the earth beacse it si spring time.

Being a landscape owner it is no suprise I would suggest that you could spruce up the community with little cost. It does not take much mulch and some flowers or plants to really make a place look a lot better. Maybe for example, land that is owned by the community like if you have a volunteer fire department, a park. Intro into your community sign and around it or an elderly home.


Also I have heard of communities (providing you use chalk that washes off) to offer the side walks for the members of your community to do art work on the side walk for a weekend. All ages could be welcomed to attend and participate.

No matter what you decide it is a great thng you are doing nightowl!

I don't suppose a Lucid Dreaming workshop is probable ;)

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I don't suppose a Lucid Dreaming workshop is probable[/b]

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Hehe, that was what I was gogin to suggest, tbu that woudltn be problable...

Our freshman class is having our make a difference projects right now. We have to make a difference in our community and here are some that have been used.

Homelessness
Improve Sex Ed
Paint A place, or rid it of graffiti
Give books and blankets to orphanage, or other similar organization (our group did this and we have a website I'm hoping to get on here soon)

Good Luck!

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Originally posted by sephiroth clock
Our freshman class is having our make a difference projects right now. We have to make a difference in our community and here are some that have been used.

Homelessness
Improve Sex Ed
Paint A place, or rid it of graffiti
Give books and blankets to orphanage, or other similar organization (our group did this and we have a website I'm hoping to get on here soon)

Good Luck!

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Similar to what sephiroth clock said but setup a program that would give incentives of some sort to the Homelessness and kids to Paint a place, or rid it of graffiti

An open garden: The idea of this is to initially make a huge open field and split it up into seperate themes, say for example this time, four, they could be (don't have to be)

1. The beach
2. Beauty
3. Aqua
4 Peace

Each one would be absolututy different from the last:

1. The beach: his one could, for example have no grass, but instead a large area of sand, with decking arround the side. To keep with the beach theme, you could have say, tables (wooden) arround the place with those big beach umrellas.

2. Beauty: Now this could work really well, if you had a path made of stone paving twisting and turning that the people could walk through, on each side of the path, could be bushes, flowers etc, all with leaves of a deep green colour and make sure the flowers colours don't clash.

3. Aqua: This has a lot of potential, if it were to work on a similar format as Beaity, but with lakes, it would offer some beautiflt lillys on the lakes, buy also to keep people going there, the lakes could be opened up for fishing, for familly days out, hell, maybe even ducks for old people to feed.

4. Peace: This is the most conventional of the three, a normal garde, with nice flowers, bushes, fruit trees, but most importantly, little statues (most garden centres don't charge much for these) it would finish off the old peaceful look. Maybe benches for people to sit in and look at the beauty arround them.

Just and idea.

Probably the best thing you can do is to find an area that needs renovation or cleaning up. There is little use in creating something new unless there is a plan AND budget available for maintaining your new project.

I like Ophelia's idea, but if that is not possible, you could try something like one of our local community service groups does.

They essentially get local harware and lumber yards to donate supplies and they provide labor for fixing up orphanages, old peoples homes and so on. $3500 is a great motivator, you can approach the local supply yards, tell them you guys have $3500 and nine people who are wanting to go fix up old ladies houses and ask them if they could pitch in with some 2x4's.

Nine people can get a lot done on A Saturday. Uh, are any of you knowledgeble in construction?

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Originally posted by Seeker
Probably the best thing you can do is to find an area that needs renovation or cleaning up. There is little use in creating something new unless there is a plan AND budget available for maintaining your new project.

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Yeah that's an excellent point. Creating something that requires MORE money to maintain is rather pointless when there are so many existing areas that need renovations.

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!

[/soapbox]

first, thanks for helping everyone :)

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Originally posted by Je33ica+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Je33ica)</div>

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is there an abandoned park in your town? [/b]

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hmm..not that i know of...maybe neglected parks because kids don't live near them, but they are all in pretty good shape. I'll look around though.

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Originally posted by Lucius+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Lucius)</div>

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Just how big is your town, really? And is there any specific target group? Like kids, youngsters, adults, or all of them?[/b]

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My town is fairly small. A suburb of boston. I think only around 60,000 people live in here. As for targets, its supposed to be for everyone, or almost everyone :P

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Originally posted by OpheliaBlue
Check out your local Habitat for Humanity chapter or a campus affiliate. They're always needing more funds and extra hands. You could combine efforts. There could be a building blitz going on right now in your area, since they usually coincide with spring breaks so they can get more student volunteers.

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Thats a really good idea, but they dont have any of those things in my town and this project has to be for my town and in my town. :(

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Originally posted by OpheliaBlue
Helping to put an end to substandard housing is one if the best things you can do for your community.

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you have no idea(or you might) how truthful that is. Right now my town is being raped up the ass with overpriced condominiums EVERYWHERE. They even tore down our hospital to build some.

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Originally posted by barbizzle
Why dont you clean up an abaonded oepn space or somethign and then host a sundy arts and crafts day for sineors and little kids or somethig like that. Maby have some music and some fun little projects to teach someone something...

The arts and crafts projects can be all about careing ofr the environment. YOu ocudl plant small plants wiht the kids and they can color and cutout stuff about trees and the earth beacse it si spring time.

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hmm...we were/are considering that, but we're a bit worried where to do that and how much people would come(our town is full of lazy people :|), but I'll bring it out to the table for the council to think about. Thanks :)

<!--QuoteBegin-Howetzer@
Being a landscape owner it is no suprise I would suggest that you could spruce up the community with little cost. It does not take much mulch and some flowers or plants to really make a place look a lot better. Maybe for example, land that is owned by the community like if you have a volunteer fire department, a park. Intro into your community sign and around it or an elderly home.

Also I have heard of communities (providing you use chalk that washes off) to offer the side walks for the members of your community to do art work on the side walk for a weekend. All ages could be welcomed to attend and participate.

No matter what you decide it is a great thng you are doing nightowl!

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Good idea! I'll just have to find an area to do something like that..i can probably find a walkway along the river that runs through our town for that. We brought up the chalk thing before and we decided not to do it because it would just wash off. We sort of want something that will have a lasting effect on the town.

<!--QuoteBegin-sephiroth clock
Homelessness
Improve Sex Ed
Paint A place, or rid it of graffiti
Give books and blankets to orphanage, or other similar organization (our group did this and we have a website I'm hoping to get on here soon)

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The graffiti one sounds good, but i dont think we have much or any at all. The only one i can think of now are the rocks along the road to our school and those are done by the seniors every year, so thats a wasted effort. I'll go around town though and try to find some.

Alex: I really like your idea! it sounds pretty cool. I will bring that up and I intend to support it. hopefully the others will like it to.

Seeker: I like you're idea to, but I dont know if we'll be capable of doing that O-o. it's just a bunch of 16-18 year olds and some college profesors who...um...well, one is quite old, and the other two dont look like they know a thing about construction...but perhaps we can hire some people to do it? I'll try to see what we can do with that plan.

This is a GREAT start guys. thanks so much for helping me out! keep them ideas coming :D

How about creating a garden with a fountain in the middle. The fountain could have steps and an anphitheater feel (great for meeting and discusing philosophy). Also make the garden something easy... like a rock garden. It would look sick, and rock gardens are cool in the winter too. Have some cool inscriptions about civic duty or enlightenment around the place on the steps or rock benches...

Anyways... that might cost a bit of mula and a lot of time... jsut my thoughts

Nightowl
[u]I think when it is all said and done you should tell us wich one you chose. :D

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Originally posted by nightowl
Seeker: I like you're idea to, but I dont know if we'll be capable of doing that O-o. it's just a bunch of 16-18 year olds and some college profesors who...um...well, one is quite old, and the other two dont look like they know a thing about construction...but perhaps we can hire some people to do it? I'll try to see what we can do with that plan.

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Forget about hiring them, get the to volunteer. All you really need is one person that has some construction knowledge and let them supervise the work.

I was gonna say something bout a garden but it looks like they already did..........
How bout something to do with charity? Like rebuilding and orphanage or something like that. Or what about the pounds?

Sorry those are the only things i could think of.

Here are a couple of things I have done while being a member of Circle K.

1. Make some bagged lunches and go around the town handing them out to any homeless people you see.
2. Go to nursing homes and play bingo or have some other event that the residents would enjoy. Really anything will help because a lot of those people don't ever get visitors and are depressed because they have no one left in their lives.

ok guys, i've gathered up many of the ideas and sent it in an e-mail for the council people to read and discuss. I wish I would be there when they make the decision, but tomorrow morning I will be leaving to go to Florida...by car...from massachusetts. so it'll be a long ride with my family and wont be back until the 24, which is sunday. As soon as I hear the results and what we're doing, I'll try to come here and inform you all asap :)...till then im going to lock this sticky and when i get back and hear what we, or they, decide on, i'll unlock it and tell you guys, then unsticky it to be forgotten into the pile of lost threads, never to be seen again ;)

btw, seeker, you can remove the announcement at the top of the page. thanks again for doing that for me and letting me post this :D

noooooo! >_<

you guys wont believe this! We recently discovered that we are NOT allowed to do our own project from the grant givers. ugh..my god, i can't fathom as to why they didn't tell us this sooner. we spent so much time brainstorming and researching for ideas for our project :cry: . Ugh...so now we're rushing everything to give out the rest of the money to other programs(which was what we're supposed to do according to the people).

sorry guys for all the trouble :|...i really do appreciate all the thought and help you put into it though. i really do.

im gonna unlock it and unsticky it now.

So all your effort was for nothing? :(

That just sucks.

Sorry to here that your efforts fell by the way side nightowl.

I don't think that it was a total waste though.
I think it was great to see everyones creative ideas and there interest in doing something good. Maybe another time you or any one of us will be able to put some of these great ideas into action. :)