IT’S DONE!

http://www.upstatehomeless.com/

coming to a close…

Today is the day we present our semester’s work to Linda and Mike! I can’t wait to see the entirety of what the rest of the class has been doing. It has been fun to see the work of the fundraising group and the documentary group, but I’m looking forward to seeing the presentations. We compiled a Social Media Manual to pass over to Linda and Mike today so that they can have a step-by-step “how to” guide to social media. I guess my job with this class won’t be done until they decide whether or not they want to use the website in place of their old one. It’s strange to think that it’s all in their hands now and that they might choose to not even use the website. I think it is a great opportunity for them to polish the look of their organization.

It has been a blast working on this class this semester and it’s crazy to think that it is coming to a close. I can definitely see myself doing work with a non-profit organization in the future, so it has been a great learning opportunity to take part in this class this semester and be able to work with the Upstate Homeless Coalition.

thoughts.

It’s crazy to think that this semester is almost over. I’m so happy with everything that we’ve been able to do for UHCSC, and I haven’t even heard the final reports that will be shared in our last class. Seeing the documentary the other night was really great. The documentary team put to much time into it and it does a great job highlighting homeless situations in Upstate South Carolina. I really hope that we walk away from this class having left the Upstate Homeless Coalition with useful tools that they can utilize to help move their organization forward. I’m so glad we have an alternative website option to offer them. It still needs to have information on the Bridesmaid Ball added, but then it should be good to go. I might ask Rick if he could add more pictures, but I still think it looks great. I look forward to hearing how much money the fund raising group made. It was really fun to get to promote and publicly support UHC last week.

more on the website

I met with Rick last week and progress on the website is coming right along. Our goal is to have it done by the 20th. Rick had everything organized in a very cohesive way and has a good idea of the design he would like to implement. I’m excited to see how it’s going to turn out!

gravity

Last night I attended a screening for Invisible Children on campus. Invisible Children is an organization dedicated to ending a war and helping educate the children affected by it. They go on tours to educate schools and different organizations on the situation happening in Northern Uganda. As a college student, it is so easy to become preoccupied with my prerogatives. I have papers to write, tests to take, friends to have dinner with, and places to go on the weekends. Poor me. It’s easy to stay in my bubble. In my bubble, I’m the star. In my bubble, what I want done is what gets done. In my bubble, I’m unaware of any real suffering in the world. It’s pretty easy in here. I can focus all my efforts on making myself comfortable and propagating my own initiative. When Invisible Children came, I was reminded of the fact that this world is broken. There are people truly suffering and going through hardships. There are family broken by war. There are children who are homeless because the only home they knew was ripped from them. There are children who do not have the opportunity to go to school because they have no free public school system, as we do in the states. The founders of Invisible Children went to Uganda and recognized a problem. They could have come home and tried to forget what they saw. Instead, they were active. They made a documentary and shared it with their friends and family, who in turn shared it with their friends and family. The compelling story they reported moved the hearts of thousands and birthed a passionate, effective non-profit organization that has been hard at work, rallying for peace, justice, and hope in Northern Uganda. I hope to one day be a part of something that makes that kind of impact for such a worthy cause

ahhh… much better

Now I’ll just leave it up to Erin if she wants to use it or not.

new facebook logo

Here’s that logo I mentioned the other day:

Erin wanted to update UHCSC’s facebook logo, so I put this together and I think it looks 100x better than the one they have before! To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the font, but it is the same font we used for our slogan, so I used it for the sake of consistency. I just think it looks a lot better when it’s lower case. Now that I think about it, it’s solely because the L curves and doesn’t come to a point that I don’t like it that much. Surely I could do something about that.

food for thought…

When inconsistencies are found in nature, they are celebrated.

four leaf clover the Grand Canyon Iguazu Falls

When inconsistencies are found in people, they are judged, stereotyped, rebuked, cast out.

Just because someone is different from us gives us no right to consider them any less valuable. We tend to, be it consciously or unconsciously, put people on a continuum of worthiness. The more like us they are, the more value we find in them. The more we perceive they can do for us, the more energy we will put towards them. What if we treated nature the same way? What if we disregarded natural wonders because they were different? What if we never traveled, never explored, or never opened our eyes to the greater reality of the world we live in? When we choose to discount people because of their differences, it is like we have chosen to live within the confines of our backyard for fear of the unknown.

Homelessness carries many negatively perceived differences. No, they may not have a house to return to every night like you do. No, they may not have a steady job like you do.  Every person has a unique, important story to tell and we need to stop viewing differences in people in a negative light. We need to stop passing judgments on inconsistencies in others because we view our way as superior. Our diversity is beautiful and from it we can learn more than we’d ever imagined. We aren’t scared of inconsistencies within nature, we are drawn to them. We need not be scared of inconsistencies within people groups. Rather, we should learn to engage, learn from, and experience other vantage points. The world is bigger than our own back yard. It is also bigger than our own opinion.

Bob was a big, intimidating homeless man with his gang colors tied respectfully on his belt loop. I say he “was” because Bob became a friend. After talking with Bob one day in a park, I learned of his hard past. I learned how he left the north to escape the gang violence, but he still wore the colors in honor of his family. He was a man devoted to studying the word of God. He was out of work because of a leg injury. He was waiting on government help. He did not want to stay with his sister full-time because he didn’t want to be a bother, so instead he stayed in the shelter and spent weekends with her. He was kind hearted and spent the majority of his day in the public library reading his Bible. Had I never stopped to talk, Bob would have remained an “intimidating” and “dangerous” man. Now I know better, and I saw the beauty in his sweet spirit and his honest desire for more.

I’m not arguing that you let go of your personal values and become subjected to whatever opinion the wind blows your way. Rather, I urge you to regard differences with love and accept the person regardless of their race, bank account, color, socio-economic status, age, or area of town in which they live. Take time to understand the differences, and in doing so, uncover the beauty within the inconsistencies.

the website… in the works

As a part of the website redesign, we first had to know what we were working with. Therefore, I reviewed the current website and made a list of all the current pages, along with all the content on each of those pages. I analyzed which pages could be combined and condensed and created a simpler layout of the site. Once my re-organization was done, I handed the reigns over to Rick for the actual design, which he is currently working on. I thought about color schemes for the site, and concluded that a nicely done gray-scale might look the best. That way, their logo and content can provide color, while keeping the site looking professional. Some very popular sites are gray-scale, like Apple and COLOURlovers. My apprehension to using gray-scale is that it would make the site boring, but I think the previous two examples are great proof that that doesn’t have to be the case.

…the past couple weeks

A lot has happened since my last post.

The Bridesmaid’s Ball was a big hit. A few people from class were able to go and volunteer, and it was a blast. A lot of people made it out and really contributed to the Upstate Homeless Coalition’s cause.

We nailed down the slogan for our campaign:

Just one _______ away.

I really like it because it hearkens back to what we read in class about everyone being just one “something” away from homelessness, be it a car payment, a surgery, a paycheck, a broken relationship, etc. The beautiful thing that I love about this slogan, is that it can be turned around and used in a more optimistic light by exploring how those who are without homes are just one “something” away from hope. That hope can come in the form of a dollar, a friend, or an organization like UHCSC.

I played around with some logo stuff for our campaign…

We finally decided on something simple, that could be specialized to whatever it was being used for, and this is what I came up with:

We liked the fact that it was simple and could easily be worked into many mediums. It applies to the argument that everyone is just one travesty away from homelessness, but also can be used to convey that everyone is

We’ve been able to polish up the image of UHCSC a little bit. Erin has been doing a great job with the Facebook page, and I got to help by sending her an updated image for their page’s profile picture.

I’ve been working closely with Rick on the website. I’ve gone through and organized the content and thought about color scheme. Currently, Rick’s in the process of going through the organization of the site I’ve given him and coming up with a basic layout. I really hope they like the more streamlined approach to the site. Every link won’t be accessible via the main page, but it will be organized well and follow logical process, so that when people are looking for specific programs or ways to help, it will be easy to find what you’re looking for. I am excited to see how it turns out.  I hope they like the finished product.