OT: Paris Hilton is dating DHH
Greg Moreno
Hello friends.
Last December, I hinted about a starting PhRUG-led public-service
project. It was my lucky day because several people volunteered right
away to build the website. Today, we want to share what we are
building. This is something very close to our hearts and we are very
excited about it. We hope our excitement spreads to you and your
friends.
Our project focuses on 2 problems:
1. Have a way for bright students to seek financial help.
2. Have a way for people, wherever they are, to help these students.
Now you're thinking there are hundreds of scholarships out there for
college students and thousands of fast food joints offering jobs. But
our target are not just college students. Our aim is to help
elementary and high school students in public schools. The young
Juan's who sell vegetables in the market, or the young Maria's who
sell buko pie at the bus station. For the lucky ones, after school
they have no choice but to skip play time and help their parents. For
the unlucky ones, they drop out of school at age 12. According to
statistics, the population in public elementary schools is around 12
million students, and in high school around 5 million. In an ideal
world, there should be around 8 million students in high school.
Our project is a combination of high technology and manual labor. Lots
and lots of manual labor :)
The high-tech part is a webapp where student information and financial
details can be posted. Generous folks like you can pick a student to
support by giving financial assistance. So how can the family of a
grade 5 student with very little money even for food would have
access to a computer and the Internet? They don't need to; and this is
where the lots and lots of manual labor come in.
We need volunteers to organize what I call a micro-scholarship
foundation of their own. A volunteer picks the school, chooses the
students, withdraws from the bank, and handles all the necessary
interfaces to our webapp. My college buddies with the help of a
teacher have already organized one and they have sponsored 5 students
from an elementary school in Quezon City. Every month, money arrives
from the US, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Another
teacher from Montalban, Rizal are asking us to organize one in her
school. Yes, we can duplicate it in other schools. Unfortunately, we
can't clone our bodies and our money. (I wish it was that easy :))
The project's name is SchoolArk where ARK == Act of Random Kindness.
The first one to guess it right where I got the idea will receive a
kiss from Paris Hilton.
While the initial students are Filipinos, we want this webapp to be
used in other countries as well. Other countries have the same
problems in education as the Philippines. SchoolArk can become the
Kiva.org for students - "Designed in Manila. Used around the world"
:)
Of course, the high-tech part is where PhRUG comes in (though I am not
discouraging you to become a volunteer for your school, too).
Currently, we have Cris and Eumir working on this during their free
time. Please treat them to Starbucks - they need all the caffeine :)
We still need a developer, a designer, and someone who loves to
write. For now, only the developers can access the code but it will be
open eventually.
If you can't help with the coding, you can help with the following:
* When the preview is ready, help us find and fix bugs. The core
developers are really good but we are only humans. As Linus once said,
"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
* Spread the word. Tell your friends and relatives. Do you know that
250 pesos a month is enough to support 1 student? That is just 2
BigMac meals.
* Share it with other communities. We have ideas for creating a
Wordpress plugin or a website widget. We sure need some help from our
PHP friends :)
* Be a volunteer. If you came from a private school, find a public
school in your town. Talk to the principal and find a volunteer
teacher to help you out.
* Share with the expenses. If you can shoulder the hosting expenses,
thank you! If you want to buy as coffee, thank you! If you've just
won the lottery, fund us so we can hire developers. Who wouldn't want
to work on Ruby/Rails full time? :)
That's it for now and I hope you're infected with our excitement.
Before I eat some bagels (it's 1:30 AM here in Vancouver), I leave you
with a few words from Rabbi Harold Kushner:
"Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those
rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are
hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live
so that our lives matter so the world will at least be a little bit
different for our having passed through it"
Regards,
Greg
Neil Zamora
Richard Gonzales
Giancarlo Angulo
This is very heart warming to read!
Just curious , what would 250 pesos buy? is this for school supplies? fare and food?
=====
ANGOL
=====
-----|-^_^X@^_^, =====|+^_^X++~_~,@-----
"The only thing worse than a hopeless romantic is a hopeful one"
Magbasa bago Mamuna. Mag-isip bago mambatikos
Without Truth there is no Justice,
Without Justice, there is Tyranny
Semper fi
Proof of Desire is Pursuit
www.onthe8spot.com
igan...@gmail.com
09173822367
David Beckwith
this to an awesome designer too.
Is there a task list?
David :)
Greg Moreno
ramon, david - I'll invite you to our unfuddle account
richard - you owe me one!
neil - thanks man!
angol - most of the time for food and occasional school supplies
- greg
Ronny Ager-Wick - Develo Ltd.
Even after having lived in the Philippines for a total of 2 years, I
find it unbelievable that 250 pesos is enough to make a difference!
My main concern for this project though is the part where a volunteer
withdraws from the bank... How do ensure that the money actually reaches
its destination, and the the students are real students? I guess as long
as politicians are not involved you're relatively safe, but this is a
potential weak link.
I just ordered a reseller account on hostingrails.com, so I can provide
a hosting account for you if you're fine with shared hosting for now.
Ronny.
Johann Vincent Paul Tagle
I have been a World Vision donor for some years now. I sponsor 2 kids at 450 per child per month. I believe they will be sending me a letter that the cost has increased to 600 soon. But for 450 a month, they are really able to bring back a child to school - I think that mainly means tuition (if any) and supplies, and hedge some reserves for use just in case a sponsor gets delayed with his contributions for any reason. They are also able to send me annual updates about the kids. It's heartwarming to receive a handwritten letter from them.
You might want to increase the 250/month to take into account making some reserves and to facilitate some communication between the sponsor and the child. Since we are more techsavvy here, we can eliminate postage costs - maybe once a month the local volunteer can bring children with letters to an Internet cafe? Nice to expose them to computers too. Or maybe the local volunteer can scan handwritten letters and upload them to the site?
Btw, did you know that the Fil-am singer of the Black Eyed Peas was once a sponsored child? He was adopted by his sponsors and about 2 years ago he paid back the foundation who helped him (Pearl S Buck Philippines) by visiting sponsored children and offering inspiration. A very nice story when I read about it.
Greg, I'll email you privately later this week about some other thoughts. I also have some "pay it forward" initiatives I'm working on and maybe we can help each other in many ways.
Johann
Web application and database consulting: www.sagadasolutions.com
Johann Vincent Paul Tagle
Took time to look at my World Vision files. A newsletter received last year had this article:
Is my P450 enough?
Your monthly donation is primarily used to provide educational assistance to your sponsored child. It covers the hidden costs of educations such as uniforms, school supplies and other expenses that would have otherwise hindered children from finishing school.
Your support is combined with that of other sponsors to meet the other critical needs of your and their sponsored children: healthcare, child protection, participation and value formation.
We also see one-time donations from individuals and corporations to fund leadership and livelihood trainings for their parents and community leaders, as well as other development projects that the entire community will benefit from.
The rest of the article talks about the plan to increase the monthly donation due to increasing costs. My point in bringing the above up is soon enough, this noble project you started will meet challenges such as children getting sick and become unable to go back to school due to poor health or become frequently absent from classes because he/she has to help earn a living. I think we need to be ready to increase our scope of assistance to affect the whole family. Of course, this will mean increase in costs, but such is the reality of it. This is what I observed with both World Vision and Pearl S Buck Philippines (I know the latter because my mom was once its executive director).
Btw, do we already have a separate mailing list for this initiative? Now that it is announced, maybe it would be good to have one, and let whoever is interested in the project join it. Suggest a group that talks of the overall program, with the technical discussions kept at unfuddle. I want to invite my mom to join the group to share insights, but it can't be on any place where technical discussions take place as she will get really confused if she suddenly receives emails that talks of ActiveRecord and the like =). Same with other people who may be interested to help on the non-technical side.
Johann
jay
Email me. Probably we can set something up.
jay
Email me. Probably we can set something up.
On Jan 15, 1:32 am, "Greg Moreno" <greg.mor...@gmail.com> wrote:
Greg Moreno
- Greg
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Johann Vincent Paul Tagle
<johan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Greg,
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Starting From Scratch
http://gregmoreno.ca