I Finally Did It!

Remember how I was talking about how I was so scared to ask people for donations in our last meeting. Well, guess what? I did it!

I asked everyone on my list for donations (or at least called them). I got a lot of, "Can you please call back?" or "My manager is not in right now, can he/she call you back?" but I also got a lot of yes's.

La Bella Casa has volunteered to offer coupons. So has some massage therapists :). Also, Mission Foods is donating bags of chips! Now, I just need to follow up with those people who haven't gotten back to me. I have decided to give them another ring on Friday to follow up if I haven't heard back from anyone.

We have also finalized our brochure and will be printing them in house this week and passing them out. Also, be on the lookout for our banner going up soon. I will be dropping it off to the fire department today. Think of me when you see it hanging on Third St.

Auction was a Success!

As you're probably aware, this last Saturday was the auction and what a success!  

We had 140 guests and raised $30,000, which is the most they've raised in this event.  

I of course helped set-up and tear-down, but it was nice seeing everyone in high spirits and excited for the event.

It was great to see all our hard work coming together in one night.  And it was especially nice for me to see my video being played at the event and just knowing the impact it was going to make for those watching it.

Overall, it was a great experience.  I've never been to an auction before, but I helped our emcee during the live auction and it was a lot of fun.

Later in the week I helped Amy put away the supplies we used during the auction and send out thank-you notes to those who donated money.  It took all day since I had to hand write these notes, but they deserve a thank you!

On Monday Amy and I are going to talk about what I'll be doing for the next couple of weeks that are left.  She's thinking I'll help with volunteer training, but we're supposed to talk about it on Monday.

It looks like my internship is coming to a close!  I'm just glad the auction was a success.

-Mica 

Done with transcriptions!

After two weeks, I am finally done with transcriptions. Now comes the fun/unfamiliar process of creating a profile of the adult foster care homes. I have emailed my site supervisor several times now to set up a meeting time so we can talk about the formatting of the portfolio, but she has yet to get back to me on a solid time she would be available. So for now, I am alone on figuring out the portfolio. I'm also realizing that the final banquet is coming up soon, 3 more weeks! So I really don't have much time left to get everything together. I am hoping to find somebody who I can run my ideas through and who can give me a few suggestions. I guess we'll see how this goes.

Louie Loy

Went back to the Yamhill Historical Society this morning and learned about Louie Loy. The first time I went, all we found was one small yellow folder on Chinese men in Yamhill County. This morning I happened to meet a volunteer who is currently doing research on very a important man, Louie Loy, also known as the "Chineseman." The society is trying to find where he was buried so that they can place a tombstone over it.

Still having no luck finding out about policies prohibiting Chinese men from owning and living within McMinnville city limits. But I think I may be getting closer to finding more about it. I finally set up an appointment with the owner of the building Chinese men lived in the basement of in the early 1900s. I'll be sure to blog about my experience down there :)

Just goin with it

As I mentioned in this week's meeting, I have come to a bit of a standstill as far as communication with the Tribes. I have sent e-mails to Mr. Thorsgard in an attempt to set up additional meetings, as well as an e-mail to Mrs. Brown in order to gain access to some photos. Mr. Thorsgard has yet to respond and I did receive a response from Mrs. Brown. However, in order to gain access to the photo there is compensation required---depending on the amount I might be able to include them with my presentation.

At this point I have taken the initiative to just continue on with the project at my own pace. I'm about 3/4 of the way done with my PowerPoint and hopefully as I draw near the end I will receive a response from Mr. Thorsgard. I would really like to run it through him to make sure I am not forgetting/misinterpreting any information, but in the same breath I cannot continue to wait for I might just run out of time.

Hope everyone else is having success with their projects!

The Week of the Auction!

Hello!

So, this week I was able to finalize and present my video to my supervisor, Amy.  I'm really excited to show it at the auction on Saturday.

This week has just been so busy at the office.  I helped Amy check-off her list of to-do's, which meant working on 10 individual projects all day on Wednesday.  These projects were minor, yet were things that

I'm just really excited for this Saturday.  I'm excited to see all these people who are trying to support this great non-profit organization and I really hope it runs smoothly.

I'll be there to help set-up on Saturday as well as carry out my assignments throughout the event with the auction and bidding.

Overall, since I was in charge of advertising I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to hear we only had 120 guests.  Our maximum was 160, so I was hoping to get at least 140, but maybe more people will register between now and Saturday.

For now, I'm just looking forward to the auction! Wish us luck!

This Week in the World of Event Planning

As you all heard after yesterday's class, I have a fear of asking people for donations, which is pretty much my job as of now at this moment of the event. I have spoken to Harvest Fresh and Betty Lou's who have agreed to provide fruit and energy bars on the day of the event. I still have a long list to go through (probably more than 10), so I will be pumping myself up for that!

Diane, our supervisor, has contacted her friends who are massage therapists who think it will be a great idea to have a vendor station open while supplying out first 200 preregistered participants with 10% off coupons! Hopefully other vendors are as generous as they are. I mean, why wouldn't they be? They have participated with us before...

We have also decided on prizes for the different age brackets. We will be giving an RWR poster with their time on it along with a first place, second place, or third place ribbon attached to the corner. We have decided to decrease the amount of age brackets we have so they now include:

14-19

20-29

30-39

40-49

50-59

60+

This number should also help keep our awards show on task. I wonder if we can get a podium donated?? Hmmm....

We have had some issues with the website. On it, when you register, it was giving people the option to not process their payments now. I have about 10 people that have not processed their payments, and now I have to go hunt them down and get their money! We decided that we would not allow them to be considered for preregistration until they pay and we were able to fix that option to just a "Yes" on our website. Phew!

I have also been looking for volunteers to help place yard signs at the beginning of May. I will be asking my sorority, but if any of you know of people that need some community service or want to help, please let me know! The busy month is just around the corner...I hope I can keep up!

Another Week of Video Editing

Hello,

This week wasn't very eventful and the work was similar to last week.  I spent a lot of time in the FDL room at the library editing the CASA auction video.  I definitely had to use a lot of patience and adjust my expectations to what I was actually able to do. Yesterday, I finally finished what I hope is the final edit to the video.

Next Saturday is the auction and it's crazy to think how fast its come.  I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do this week since I've already worked to advertise for the event and it's so close that I can't really start a new advertising idea, so I think I'll start preparing thank-you cards for those who've helped me advertise this event.

I'm really excited for the auction and can't wait to see the fruits of all our labor paying off :)

Trying to make sense of it all

At this point I am trying to sort my way through all of the documents I have been provided with. There are several different records of history for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, slightly contradicting in a few places which makes it a little difficult.

I'm a bit torn because I know that the tribes were hoping that I could tell the whole story, as they see that is the only way to tell the story, but I just do not have the time. Additionally, the project is trying to get snapshots from a 100 years ago versus today, not the entire 150 years of tribal history :-(. Given that I plan to try and illustrate what life was like approximately 100 years ago with the relocation and lifestyle. I'm hoping to get not only pictures, but recordings of tribal elders that tell what life was like. I will also focus on two main time periods that lead to restoration. Finally, I will end with what life looks like today for the tribes.

Seems a bit overwhelming at the moment, but I am hoping that once I start getting things put on paper it will all come together. Hope the rest of you are having success!

April Timeline

This week will be a busy one! My to-do lists are getting consistently longer and I need to tackle it. I know that I have been saying this for weeks, but I am contacting vendors this week to ask for some coupons or products to place in our race day goody bags. On my list for today are Harvest Fresh and Betty Lou's. I also received some contact information for massage therapists. I will be asking if they can set up a booth on race day and provide some 10% off coupons!

As of yesterday, Becky is officially not working at Habitat for Humanity. It is definitely a loss because she has so much knowledge on running the event, but she left us in capable hands: Diane Longaker. Becky is still available by email if we need to get in touch with her, which I may have to do regarding the bibs.

We ordered the bibs for the race yesterday, and we should receive them April 25 (give or take a day). I'm really excited to see them; they look fantastic on PDF! I am continuing to work on the registration spreadsheet, but I'm not sure how to assign bib numbers. That's a question for Becky, gotta get her email address now...

I will be going in on Friday after class to start an inventory list of everything we have for race day. I think this will help us in organization because we will know what we have and what we need. I am also trying to get some girls from my sorority to help with the inventory count this Friday, making it a community service event. I feel that it will be good for me to start going in for a couple of hours every Friday. This will help me buckle down and start crossing off things on my to-do list.

Transcriptions

So I have now moved on to the next stage of my internship: that of transcribing all sixteen interviews. Usually the interviews take up to forty-five minutes, and forty-five minutes of recording usually takes about two hours, sometimes three hours to transcribe. It's a really grueling and intense process, and probably is the least enjoyable part of the internship. Right now I am up to my forth interview, and I think it will take me another two weeks before I finish transcribing all the interviews. This is going to be interesting.

Design a logo/header

Susan Blosser gave a challenging mission: to design a logo/header for the website. The old header was just "Yamhill Enrichment Society" with green background. Another student, who worked for her during Jan-term, designed a header with three pictures as background. In order to match the design of the website and YES's objectives, I decided to come up with a entire new idea.
Susan really likeed the native Oregon White Oak, because she said it's a symbol of strength, longevity, and stability, depends on a strong root system for its majestic character, and taking a cue from the oak, YES nourishes Yamhill County at its roots to grow a strong, vibrant community. So I added the oak into the header, which gives the header a little bit personality. I sat in the MSCM lab and change back and forth and finally had a header in green and white. It's clean and simple, which can tell it's a non-profit organization.

CASA Auction Video

Hello!

So, this week I've been working on a totally different project outside of advertising for the CASA auction at the end of April.  Amy, my supervisor, asked me to create a video that could be shown on auction night.

Because we don't have a way to create a video of our own right now, we took videos from the National CASA Youtube channel.  I chose 4 videos and compiled and edited them into one 13 minute video.

I had a big learning experience using a new video software in the Tech Lab, but I really enjoyed the process of video editing.

So far this internship has given me a lot of new opportunities and I guess this would be a good example of how broad their needs become and how flexible I need to be in order to meet those needs.

Meeting with Mr. Thorsgard

Unfortunately my meeting with Mr. Thorsgard was not quite what I was expecting. After speaking with Mr. Merrill I was under the impression that Mr. Thorsgard had some ideas of his own for this project, but I was wrong. Instead, Mr. Thorsgard suggested that I take part in some reading and lots of it. He provided me with an informational packet that contains tribal history, important dates, a list of suggested readings, a DVD on tribal history, and a book. Once I had familiarized myself with these documents and the history of the tribes then I could set up another meeting with him to discuss the powerpoint. Additionally, I am to set up a meeting with Julie Brown in order to get pictures. The pictures are an additional "hassle" because there is a process by which I must go through in order to use the pictures. Mr. Thorsgard and the other members who work in cultural resources are given the pictures by families, but with stipulations. For example, if a picture was given to them with strict restrictions for only the family to see them then I would not be able to use them for the project.

My plan for right now is to read as much of the history as possible in order to have a general understanding of where the tribes have been and how they came to be what they are today. For the presentation I will focus mainly on the first interactions with settlers and how the tribes came to be at Grand Ronde. There are two periods of time which the Confederated Tribes feel are most significant in regards to their efforts for restoration--I will highlight these as well and end with where they are today and the contributions they are able to make back to the community.