At This Point

In terms of generating attention, I want to hand out flyers on UMBC’s campus to ensure that students are informed about our event. I would also want to involve the UMBC webpage as well as the myumbc ticker. I would also want to take advantage of the open spaces on campus such as academic row where the Chick Fil A and Starbucks are in terms of advertising on campus either by posting ourselves there and creating a scene (with maybe music and flyers), the space in front of the library and also the Erickson field area. Advertising in the Commons would work to our benefit as well. For the donations of food from local vendors, I would prefer for us to go to the community beforehand and get acquainted with residents. This would allow us to familiarize ourselves with possible resources and people. The establishments that Rachel and I were able to visit had generally inviting atmospheres and the people appeared to be positively responsive to our presence with greetings and their overall demeanors.  At this point I still feel a bit detached from the event only because I feel that it is split down the middle with Art and History and with my expertise not necessarily residing within each of the two. But I do believe that I can still be valuable and contribute to either one. My grouping is now within the Art sector and I feel that our groups are wonderfully engaged and will incorporate each and everyone of us effectively. I see so much fun ahead of us!

1970 to 1980 and Demographics.

For my decade of 1970-1980, I was able to find a few articles in the archives of the Baltimore Sun. My findings for included obituaries, political campaign activity, industrial testing, a memorial pieces, demographic concern, and wedding announcements. The industrial testing articles spoke about the pollution in bodies of water that affected the water supply that was distributed to the neighboring communities. The memorial pieces consisted of a dedication to a retired Baltimore City policeman who had died of a heart attack and a member of the National Guard. The article on demographic concern referenced population movements between Baltimore City and Baltimore County, speaking of possible causes. The wedding announcements talked about brides to be and the tie to Brooklyn and Curtis Bay was that their families were from those areas.

The more recent publications referenced the movie filming of “XXX:State of the Union” which came to Baltimore City , political activity amongst communities and government officials and political activists’ working on facilitating community relations. The article about the movie spoke about how part of the city had to be shut down to accommodate filming and the article about community relationships spoke about the Chemical Industry Council of Maryland placing billboards throughout the city to "improve community outreach".

In relation to demographics and census data, I was able to find listings for both Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. Each chart contained valuable data with reference to population, ethnicity, income, age and all other viable pieces of information. I have both pdf’s printed out for reference.

Source for Demographics:

“Baltimore City NSA Demographic Profiles” Census 2000 data.

 <http://censusprofile.bnia.org/>

Rachel and I Visit The Community.

In terms of public relations and advertising, it appears as though there are several avenues available to our disposal within the community. The most viable, preliminarily in my opinion would be the bars. These appear to be attractive locations for getting the word out there. It is possible that the patrons within these establishments routinely visit and would easily see whatever advertisements we were to leave there on display.

Another thing that we noticed was that the people that we ran into appeared friendly.   This was a positive and led us to believe that we would not run into as many roadblocks as we had anticipated. Related to roadblocks though, we’d noticed that a few places were shut down or may have modified store hours, which were not on display for us to see, so we can only infer that they were not operating.

We were able to visit five establishments, two of them giving us their menus for us to contact them: Shirley’s Sunny Side Restaurant and Ultimate Pizza and Wings. After visiting the places that we were able to and generally scoping out the landscape, we decided the best way to interact with the community members to give them a feel for who we are and what we are about would be to go as a bigger group later in the day to visit these bars. It would be a great opportunity to interact with them in a laid back setting to meet common ground.

We're On Our Way.

I felt a lot of our feasibility studies had highly sustainable aspects to them. For example, the idea in Hillary’s project to join forces with their local schools works perfectly because it links us with students to promote scholarship and higher learning while in the process also helps out the community in giving the opportunity for being creative. Tying them into Earth Day would be wonderful too. Having them do easy projects with the guarantee of having an end product: a tree to watch grow is a great idea to have them feel a sense of belonging within their community. To know that their hands actually touched the soil right in there backyard, figuratively of course, could really go a long way. It would add a sense of pride to the community. I love the dirt cups idea as well because I used to do that in school and loved it. Brian’s idea of using trash was definitely original and I would love to also use stuff they already find amongst themselves to create our final project. But I am sure we do understand where difficulties would arise. Joy’s idea to project different images on different platforms is great and I believe the walking tour would be a wonderful touch. In terms of feasible projects, each project idea had do-able components. I definitely see us all collaborating effectively on what can be taken from each one to create our final product. I love the idea of having local vendors contribute but wonder if we are limited in that there are probably very few and of that few, them having enough to sacrifice may be an issue as well. Nonetheless, I know it will be easy to find donors whether they are local or outside of the community. I am so excited about us having the ball rolling and seeing everyone’s creative juices flowing!

This is random but I just wanted to throw in here that I love “The Good’s” as a title, it made me crack up :)

Feasibility Study

Title and Logo Are Featured Above. Our Logo reads as followed: "Footprints and Laughter Are What We Are After".

Mission Statement:

Restoring hope within and promoting awareness on behalf of the Curtis Bay Community in Baltimore City. There is a need for a sense of pride within this particular area due to it’s industrialized history and our family fun event pushes to assist in facilitating that.

Project Description:

We will host a three-hour event that is sure to incorporate the welcoming of younger individuals as well as older individuals. The whole idea behind our event will be to appeal to whole families; having something for everyone. Our event will take place in the Polish Home Hall and it’s yard. With the Hall’s desire to once again be a central part of the community, hosting our event would be a great way to promote that ideal.

For the face painting for the children, we will have four art students from local high schools earn community-service learning hours by working at our event. UMBC art students may volunteer their time as well. There will be four different stations dedicated to face painting.

There will be a tug of war contest to promote collaboration. We can pick sides at random to ensure that there is diversity and to steer individuals away from confining themselves to specific groupings.

For our karaoke stand, we will provide a karaoke machine rented from a Baltimore vendor. This will be hosted on the bottom floor of the Polish Home Hall.

We will have the opportunity for people to just listen to music or dance with one another on the upstairs level for an hour. We will have music from the past playing (1950’s until now, maybe even earlier depending on the feedback we get) to tap into a collective sense of nostalgia. We will have Internet access through a laptop and the proper cords available, giving us the opportunity to take song requests from different individuals. For the remaining two hours, we will   

With the three-hour time frame, we leave half an hour for both events for leeway in case the time for listening to music and dancing goes over the hour time limit. In that case, we will change that increment to being an hour and a half and then for the remaining hour and a half, have the storytelling event. For our storytelling event we will have a listing of individuals who were interested in speaking and depending on the number of volunteers, have their time limits range from five minutes to seven minutes. If our number is low enough, we may even have pre-determined speeches and imagery to enhance it. We can have them bring photographs in to be passed around or family albums if they desire to. In the case that we have several volunteers, which means over twelve, we will stick to a five-minute time limit.

Through generous donations, the food from our event will be provided by Chick-Fil-A, Papa Johns, Subway and Dunkin Donuts. Chick-Fil-A will also be providing their cow for us to entertain the children with. We will have volunteer photographers from school taking pictures of the children with the cow and doing other activities. After the event is complete, we will create a scrapbook with the photographs that were taken during the event. The scrapbook will be placed on display at the Polish Home Hall.

In terms of admission, we will charge adults $15.00 and children $7.00. If we were to get 100 adults and 100 children, we will make our grant money back and have $700 in surplus. Members of the community coalition will get a discount with the adults costing $11.00 and children costing $5.00.

The proceeds from our event will go toward the prom for the Senior Class at the local high school. We will speak with their planning committee and find out what reservations have been made already and if any sort of wish list exists. We will also find out what classes in the past have done and see if there is anything that has been done away with due to lack of funds or if there is anything that they have really wanted but could not afford.

Committee Structure:

Organizational Committee: This committee is designed to keep the event as a whole organized. Essentially, this is whom all other committees report to. They keep tabs on what still needs to be purchased, taken care of, picked up or dropped off. They also keep track of the money being spent and how much is left.  Also in charge of organizing who runs each game or activity at the actual event.

Purchasing Committee: This committee is dedicated to going out and buying the supplies needed for the activities. These will be all supplies that are not being donated such as the prizes that will be given away for the raffle being held.

Donation Committee: This committee is to make sure that each place that has agreed to donate something makes good on their donations. This group will probably be split up even further into sub groups just so that each place is always working with the same people just to make sure that there is consistency and less confusion.

Advertising Committee: This committee is designed to raise awareness and intrest about the event as a whole. In this they will be in charge of making flyers and advertisements.  They can also go door to door or hang out at local spots to promote the event and talk about its purpose and how they can benefit personally as well as their community benefiting as well. Essentially this committee is to make our event look as good as we know it will be :)

Budget:

We will reserve $600.00 for American Express gift cards to be used as prizes for a raffle. There will be four $5.00 cards, four $10.00 cards, four $15.00 cards and four $20.00 cards dedicated to the children’s raffle. For the adult raffle, there will be ten $20.00 cards, two $50.00 cards and one $100.00 card. In the case that we are required to pay an activation fee for each card, our miscellaneous account will have the funds to cover that.

From the KIPP online store, we will buy paint to be used for the face paint, which costs $5.99 per bundle. We will purchase four, which brings our total to $23.80.

From Amazon.com, we will purchase Snazzaroo brushes to be used for the face painting, which will cost $5.56 per pack of three brushes. The shipping will be free which will bring our brush purchase total to $22.24.

The Moon Bounce Rental will cost $165.00 plus sales tax and an additional $10.00 per extra hour, plus sales tax. This would bring our total for this rental to $185.00 plus sales tax, which was not readily available.

The Dual Lane Slip and Slide rental will cost $325.00 for one hour plus sales tax and $10.00 per additional hour. Our event will be held for a total of three hours, which brings our total to $345.00 plus sales tax, which was not readily available.

Ngeri owns a Banzai water slide, which we will borrow for the event for no fee.

We will rent a rope for tug of war, which costs $10.00 plus sales tax, which was not readily available.

We will also rent a Karaoke machine, which will cost $195.00.

There will be a miscellaneous account with $200.00 reserved for late fees, transportation costs and any other fee that may come about. This will be our just in case money.

That brings our total to $1,186.04. Should the sales tax for the items exceed our $1,500.00 restriction, we will do away with the moon bounce and just use both water structures. This would bring our total to $1,001.04.

Schedule:

All food donations are to be finalized by the end of March, Thursday, March 31, 2011. An inventory of just what food items will be provided needs to be done by that date.

For the rental equipment, those are to be finalized by Friday, April 8, 2011. This consists of the Moon Bounce, Karaoke Machine, Tug of War rope and

All online purchases including the face paint and brushes are to be made by Friday, April 8, 2011 as well.

The interviews for our story telling event will have to be completed by Wednesday, April 20, 2011. We will go door to door and speak to community members. With that we hope to generate a listing of those interested in speaking at the event and get a feel for what they would be saying.

Feasibility Statement:

Our goal is to raise a sense of pride within a community that seems to have lost hope in itself. We want the community to come together to laugh and have a good time, and remember how much more they can accomplish by helping one another and being there for each other. In class we talked about how the children view their neighborhood as opposed to how the adults view it. We want to actually create what the children already believe in. We want to give the students in middle school encouragement to finish high school through example and showing them the tools they have sitting right in front of them and their surrounding areas.

With that our event will connect children and adults one and the same to come and have a good time. They will be in the presence of people who care about their community and perhaps be encouraged to do the same. A relaxed and fun environment created right there in their community which some of them thought had nothing left. What could possibly be better than that?

Bibliography:

Hoponpops.com  Moon Bounce Rental, Dual Lane Slide Rental and Tug of War Rope Rental

Amazon.com  Face Painting Brushes

Kipptoys.com  Face Paint

Giant Grocery Store   Gift cards.

Coryoke.com     Karaoke machine rental.

Chick Fil A: Landsdowne, Md.                Food Donation

Dunkin Donuts: Landsdowne, Md.      Food Donation.

Papa John’s: Catonsville, Md.                 Food Donation

Subway: Catonsville, Md.                         Food Donation

Our Session With Missy.

I felt as though our session was very informative. We were able to get an even more in depth feel of her passion for the community. To know that her work with them stemmed from being in our situation at one point really made it feel more personal. It was good to hear the ideas from classmates and to get her viewpoint on them because she has a feel for what the community tends to respond to and what works best with them. I loved the ideas that we'd come up with because they all incorporated involvement amongst different community members. I also had the chance to envision some of our thoughts coming together. Missy brought up very valid points in terms of turning hope into a more concrete idea and also having the community not feel as though handouts are all that they should be receiving. Her point of saying that if she were to do the clothing drive again that she would have some sort of fee shows that she has gone through a process of trial and error with her first go being a success but learning from what was done and thinking about modifications to be made should an attempt be made to do the same thing again. Her spending time with us was very valuable because she serves as a liaison between us and the community members. She is also a good contact for us to use along the way even if just to run ideas by.

Seeing Baybrook

Visiting Baybrook was a wonderful experience. Having the opportunity to be in the spaces that we'd read about created a sense of eagerness, opportunity and uneasiness. I felt the urge to canvas the neighborhood and get a feel for what the residents had to say but understand that in time, I may be able to do that. I was at a loss of ideas in terms of what I wanted to do but in the same instances, saw countless possibilities all over. The Polish Home Hall seemed central to the community but even moreso was the water tower. From four different spaces that we'd visited, I could see it off in the near distance. I was also very curious as to what the inside of it looked like. Seeing the people along the streets also enhanced my desire to make an event that is inviting/welcoming to all. Missy was a great guide as to what the community was about, what it needs and how people respond to it. I hope to attend meetings within the community and hand out flyers door to door to get a feel for who lives there and also give them the chance to know who I am.