The solution our group came up with was to create a “Confidence Carnival” outside of Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for patients and their families throughout the Delaware community. The carnival is a special day devoted to building confidence in patients. The day would include having celebrity speakers visiting the patients. Visitors would include well known athletes at the University of Delaware such as football players. This will show the devotion that our schools athletic program has to bettering the community. Another visitor would include the recent recipient of Miss Delaware. The confidence that Miss Delaware embodies will be a great influence on the children. Besides the speakers, a field day with sports and activities will prove to the children they are just like every other kid. Our targeted age group will be children in middle school and high school. These are the children who most need a confidence boost. The confidence carnival will take place at the Alfred I. DuPont Children’s Hospital.
We estimated that 1000 people would attend our event between the hours of 12-3 on a Saturday. Using 1000 people as guidance, we estimated costs for: tents ($650), custodian services ($450), stage and sound equipment ($1200), tables and chairs ($350), projector and screen rental ($150), decorations ($600), 8 port-a-potties ($1000), video game rentals ($400), and beauty supplies ($400). The total equipment cost will be $5200. The food costs will include: 25 cases of water ($200), 50 cases of soda ($150), 600 hamburgers and rolls ($750), 600 hotdogs and rolls ($500), 100 veggie burgers and rolls ($80), popcorn and machine ($100), cotton candy and machine ($150), 30 boxes of cookies ($100), paper plates, cups, napkins, utensils, condiments ($250), and miscellaneous food and supplies ($350). Total food cost is $2630 and the total cost for the event is $7830. We will need to receive funding to cover these expenses. Funding will include government grants, corporate grants, individual donations, and corporate sponsors.
Volunteers will consist of athletes, fraternities, sororities, and clubs at the University of Delaware as well as any other members of the community. Besides volunteers, we need celebrities, athletes, and heroes to be guest speakers. We also need the children and their families to want to attend our event. Our program will benefit everyone involved; volunteers and speakers will feel fulfilled for helping children and the children and their families will gain confidence. Most notably, the children participating in the program take away important lessons from the day. By seeing that there are other kids going though similarly difficult situations, they will be reassured that they are not alone. The celebrity visits will make them feel special and boost their confidence.
Our plan would fail if we cannot get funding, volunteers, speakers, or children to attend. We will encourage children to come and volunteers to help by advertising our event through UD and nurses and guidance offices in middle schools and high schools. We believe that as long as people know about our event, they will want to attend or volunteer. We want this event to be so successful that it continues every year.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
MAD Judge
After exploring ideas to make a difference and acting as an artist to generate ideas for a solution, we next had to act as a judge to evaulate our criteria and ideas. It is important for our confidence carnival to be fun, educational, and financially feasable. The children must gain confidence and self-esteem throught their participation in our fair. The event must also appeal to children in middle school and high school of both genders.
The guest speakers, volunteers, sponsors, chidren, and families will be affected by our event. The speakers, volunteers, and sponsors will feel good about their involvment to better their community. The children will have fun and gain confidence that will lead to an improved life for many years to come. Hopefully the event will have a lasting impression on the children; we do not want to organize an event that only affects the children for that day only.
Our objective is to show disabled children that they are "normal" and just as good as everyone else. We want to encourage these children that they can accomplish anything they want and they shouldn't be discouraged because of a disability. A drawback of our idea is our need for these children to attend. Our idea will be ineffective if disabled children and famililes do not choose to attend. To ensure this doesn't happen, we will work hard to get the word out about the confidence carnival. As long as people want to attend, which our celebrity guest speakers will encourage, the chance of success is high. The timing is right for our idea since their is always a need for a program that caters to the needs of the disabled. Unfortunatly, there will always be disabled and sick children, so the sooner we impliment this program, the more good we can do. We plan on implementing this event next spring, which gives us about 1 year to organize, enlist volunteers, and implement. We are assuming that volunteers will help, celebrities and athletes will volunteer to speak, children will attend, sponsors will donate money, and/or we receive government grants. If any of these elements fall through, the event could fail.
We are confident that our confidence carnival will work because children look up to their hero's such as athletes and miss delaware. Having these "hero's" at our event to encourage children will be very effective. Similar charity events that have athletes and celebrities visit sick children in their hospital room have been effective. We will know our event has been a success when attendence increases every year and the children who attend the event make more friends, get better grades in school, experience less bullying, become leaders, and live a happier life. We can gather these records by attendence records, school transcripts, bullying reports by schools, and feedback from parents whose children attended the event. If we are able to make a difference in the lives of disabled children, our vision will be accomplished.
The guest speakers, volunteers, sponsors, chidren, and families will be affected by our event. The speakers, volunteers, and sponsors will feel good about their involvment to better their community. The children will have fun and gain confidence that will lead to an improved life for many years to come. Hopefully the event will have a lasting impression on the children; we do not want to organize an event that only affects the children for that day only.
Our objective is to show disabled children that they are "normal" and just as good as everyone else. We want to encourage these children that they can accomplish anything they want and they shouldn't be discouraged because of a disability. A drawback of our idea is our need for these children to attend. Our idea will be ineffective if disabled children and famililes do not choose to attend. To ensure this doesn't happen, we will work hard to get the word out about the confidence carnival. As long as people want to attend, which our celebrity guest speakers will encourage, the chance of success is high. The timing is right for our idea since their is always a need for a program that caters to the needs of the disabled. Unfortunatly, there will always be disabled and sick children, so the sooner we impliment this program, the more good we can do. We plan on implementing this event next spring, which gives us about 1 year to organize, enlist volunteers, and implement. We are assuming that volunteers will help, celebrities and athletes will volunteer to speak, children will attend, sponsors will donate money, and/or we receive government grants. If any of these elements fall through, the event could fail.
We are confident that our confidence carnival will work because children look up to their hero's such as athletes and miss delaware. Having these "hero's" at our event to encourage children will be very effective. Similar charity events that have athletes and celebrities visit sick children in their hospital room have been effective. We will know our event has been a success when attendence increases every year and the children who attend the event make more friends, get better grades in school, experience less bullying, become leaders, and live a happier life. We can gather these records by attendence records, school transcripts, bullying reports by schools, and feedback from parents whose children attended the event. If we are able to make a difference in the lives of disabled children, our vision will be accomplished.
Monday, May 10, 2010
MAD Explorer
For the Make a Difference project, my group got together because we were all interested in helping children. After deciding that we wanted to focus on children, we had two main ideas. One was to instill confidence in those who needed it. The other idea pertained to helping sick children. We decided to combines these ideas and help sick children develop confidence. Sick and disabled children do not have a typical life since they have to deal with doctor visits, being sick, and looking "different". They may also be behind in class because of missed time due to their illness. Besides being academically behind, they are likely to be behind socially which would likely cause them to have low self-esteem and low confidence. Middle school and High school children are those who most need a confidence boost since they are likely to be teased.
Disabled and Sick children have eneough to worry about since they have struggles to deal with. To make matters worse, their illness or disability can negitively impact their social life and they will have poor confidence. Due to this lack of confidence, they may not have the same high asspirations and goals in life that similar children without a disability or illness would have. A lack of confidence can be a self-fullfilling prophesy; if a child doesn't think they are good and they can't sucdeed, they likely won't try as hard, and as a result, they won't succeed. We want to encourage disabled and sick children that they are just as good as everyone else, and they can achieve that same goals as other kids. We also want these children to develop confidence so they can overcome the bully's that pick on them due to their unfortunate disability or illness. The goal of our project is for sick and disabled children to love and embrace who they are.
Disabled and Sick children have eneough to worry about since they have struggles to deal with. To make matters worse, their illness or disability can negitively impact their social life and they will have poor confidence. Due to this lack of confidence, they may not have the same high asspirations and goals in life that similar children without a disability or illness would have. A lack of confidence can be a self-fullfilling prophesy; if a child doesn't think they are good and they can't sucdeed, they likely won't try as hard, and as a result, they won't succeed. We want to encourage disabled and sick children that they are just as good as everyone else, and they can achieve that same goals as other kids. We also want these children to develop confidence so they can overcome the bully's that pick on them due to their unfortunate disability or illness. The goal of our project is for sick and disabled children to love and embrace who they are.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
MAD- Artist
When my group was formed, we all wanted to help children with illness and disability. Illness is something that people can not control, and it doesn't seem fair that people, especially kids who are unfortunate eneough to have an illness or disability to have to suffer. Our groups goal is to improve the lives of these kids and instill confidence in them. There are many activities that these children cannot participate in either because they are in and out of hospitals and treatment or they are physically unable to do so. One of the first thing i thought about was how athletes and other celebrities would visit sick kids. It is such a small thing to the celebrity, it only takes a few hours out of their day, but it means so much to kids to be able to see their hero in person. Their are many example's of this such as Drew Brees visiting a kid in the hospital before he won the super bowl and LSU football players, Tampa Bay Bucs football players, Bobcats Basketball players, LSU female soccar players as well as others visiting sick children in hospitals. We also thought about games in hospitals to instill confidence in fun in children. We also could improve confidence in disabled children by organizing and funding intervention sessions between students and professionals. Another idea is to encourage and educate teachers how to deal with disabled and ill children and help them succeed. An example would be to encourage teachers to allow these students to have leadership roles so their fellow students respect them. The last idea and the one we decided to implement is making a "confidence carnival" for all sick children to attend. This carnival would be outside the hospital and would include fun activities as well as activities designed to instil confidence in sick children. We realized that sick children do not have normal social lives, so we wanted to create a program to help them gain confidence. The carnival will include activities such as: face painting, guest speakers, DJ's, video games, and makeovers. The event will encourage kids that they can have a happy, successful life even though they are disabled. The carnival would maximize the impact of celebrity guest speakers since many kids could meet them, and it would also provide fun as well as the educational benefit. We had a hard time deciding where to host the event and who to invite. We decided that at the hospital would make the most sense since it would allow more sick children to attend, but we wanted to make it a community event open to all so the sick children wouldn't feel "different" or "special" by their attendence. We also had to decide on programs that would allow children with different severity of illness to participate. We wanted to include everyone, but we decided that it would be too large a task if we included room visits to those unable to leave their rooms. We will try to get funding from individuals, corporations, and the government.
This carnival will allow sick children to participate in activities and social interaction that they don't usually get to do because of their illness. Hopefully through activities like our carnival, sick children will not only have fun, but also develop confidence and social skills.
This carnival will allow sick children to participate in activities and social interaction that they don't usually get to do because of their illness. Hopefully through activities like our carnival, sick children will not only have fun, but also develop confidence and social skills.
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