touching story

While we all visited the William Byrd Community House we began to understand a little more about what they do for the community. One story our guide told us all that I particularly liked was about a program that the WBCH runs in which they trace the children's family lines back to the beginning. One of these kids turned out to have relatives still living in Africa. The child's relative was actually the chief of a village and surprisingly came to visit the WBCH. We heard so many more stories about how the William Byrd Community House helps out around the Richmond area but that particular story really stood out to me as a representation of how much they really do.

-Sean C.

Thoughts

Eighty six years. William Bird Community House has been in existence for 86 years and these past few months are the first I’m hearing about it. I wasn’t entirely sure why WBCH had flown under my radar for so long and I automatically attributed it to them not doing enough to secure a very prominent place in the community. However, after taking a tour of WBCH last week and meeting the people who run it, I realized just how much WBCH actually does for people and that getting their name out there would only benefit the community as a whole.

Adventure!

Today we will venture to the William Byrd House for our tour. I have already been there before but am looking forward to actually being walked around the facility. I contacted them about a month ago to seek a volunteer opportunity with 3-5 year olds. Once placed, I can be an assistant teaching dance and music and reading to the kids. It's a great opportunity that I will take advantage of once I get some more free time. Today I hope to gain clarity in exactly what this blog's purpose is going to be. The semester is half way over and there are no definites yet. Tonight after class I am holding auditions for a great community event that could also be charitable. It's called "Muse" and yes I am definitely using this blog as a sly way to promote it. jk! ;-) Here is a link to the facebook event!

Lipstick presents "Muse" Cabaret Auditions!

Going to the William Byrd Community House

I wonder how the Byrd people will feel about us and about our project? I think as long as we are doing this fund-raising project responsibly, they will be okay with it and us involving them. Hey, it ought to be more publicity for them and maybe even more public interest in them.

I think the William Byrd Community House is neat because it is like a safe haven within the local neighborhood that is within reach; everyone may have access to it. The place seems down-to-earth, humble, effective, and very caring about the population and should be in touch with the people they serve and issues relevant to them.


-Stephanie

What will be the turnout for our class?

I am interested in seeing how exactly we are going to do this project. Things are still in the works and it seems to be a race against time. We are trying to come up with something that'll be effective in generating funds and something that will work to attract attention to our effort. It seems like we have to think about the planning and the logic of every idea we come up with. Will we ever land on something? I know we will and I'm interested in seeing what it is, because everything's so "foggy" now.

I think some of the main questions we're wondering is how are we going to get people interested in our cause, what format are we going to present ourselves (besides using this blog), and how are we using interactive marketing in this project?

I don't know -we'll see!

-Stephanie

So what's next?

So far, Project 4063 has taken advantage of many social media sites, like facebook, twitter and tumblr.

Today, Project 4063 is going to visit the William Byrd Community House to take a tour and learn more about the organizations' history and mission.  I am looking forward to learning more about how they started out and what they do to help the Richmond area.


So what's next?  Do we host an event?  If so, what kind of event- concert, party, bake off, yard sale?  What do you think?




-Catherine

Raising money

I enjoy raising money for charities and donating a lot, so I am very hopeful that we will be able to do that for the William Byrd Community House.  I have really enjoyed watching this project progress as the semester has gone on.  I think we are really starting to advertise well and get our name out some around Richmond.  I can't wait to see how much money we raise at the end of this project.  So far, I have really enjoyed learning about blogging and how to advertise efficiently on the internet.

- Caitlin

Excited about touring WBCH today!

I am really looking forward to seeing the WBCH today.  I have passed by the place so many times while my time here at VCU, but I have never seen the inside.  I am aware of the many programs they offer children and how they help the community, but I would like to see the insides of this place.  I will update you on how the tour of the house goes.

- Caitlin

Going to the WBHC Today!

I'm excited about the chance to meet everyone at the William Byrd Community House today.  Our class will be shown around so we can get a better idea of what the WBHC is all about.  It will be good to us to get an in depth understanding of the types of programs they have put together and what it is they do to really help out the community.  The William Byrd Community House is important to the area and it is necessary for us to have a clear outlook on what they do to help our community.

- Tommy

Employment Opportunities Arise...

William Byrd Community House stands proud as participants move forward with their lives by gaining employment opportunities with the education received in WBCH's Career Readiness Program. 


Follow the link above to read more about this! 

WBCH is Open Monday-Friday

Evening and weekend programs available!

(804) 643-2717

email: doffice@wbch.org


-Sara

Project 4063 is now on Tumblr

Our blog is officially on Tumblr!  So far I have been able to load a few of the pictures Melissa and Lynna took of the William Byrd Community House.  Let me know what you think.

Don't forget to visit New York Deli on Thursday, Oct. 22nd for Deli-Palooza to support the William Byrd Community House.

-Catherine

Blog Directories

Just a quick update, we are officially on RVAblogs now. You can also check us out on loadedweb and blogflux. There are many more blog directories to come and I'll keep at them! This will also help the William Byrd Community House get out there a little bit more since they are mentioned in our site descriptions. We are still working on the Times Dispatch blog directory as far as I know. If anyone has any suggestions of other blog directories that I can put us on then go ahead and post them and I'll get right to it.

-Sean C

Enthusiastically Anxious

Hi everyone out there in the bloggosphere! I'm realy excited to get this project going and I hope that we can raise as much money possible for the William Byrd Community House. We're halfway through the semester and I'm running through all kinds of emotions! I am learning a lot from this class & i really think it's going to be beneficial for me in the future. I'm anxious also to see where our project is going because I don't want to fail! But I know with our team, we're going to definately KICK BUTT! Ummm..what else can i say? Oh yeah, there's this guy who teaches our class-he calls himself many things from Dave to MadMan, tothe King of Social Media to Mr.Drinking out of a Rugby Cleat ..he's awesome & i wouldn't mind him being my dad! I love going to class and hearing his stories of the week! haha

Okay, well I'm going back to working on schoolwork cuz apparently that's why I'm here @ school-to do work!

Rachel N.
Class Treasurer (<- haha that sounded so high school)

It's a sign!

The other morning at breakfast I saw the William Byrd Community House bus!

Also, don't forget about WBCH's Deli-Palooza - Donate to the William Byrd Community House and recieve a meal discount at New York Deli on Thursday, October 22nd.

It's a great cause and an excellent reason to go out for a good meal.

More info at their website http://wbch.org/

- Sophia DiPersio

Project 4063 on Flickr

(by Melissa Calabro) Hello all! Great news...Project 4063 is now on Flickr! Thus far, we've only got a few photos of William Byrd Community House, and a couple of Lynna posing by WBCH, but keep any eye out for more photos to come! We should have photos of the entire class, as well as our future endeavors with WBCH. Can't wait to share them with you!

Melissa

A quick word on the web banner

Our new web banner is up, yay! It was a true collabortative effort from Randy and myself, and I think we're both really happy with the way it turned out.
For those who weren't aware, the webs in the banner and logo are meant to represent a social network. The power of a social network comes from its ability to spread information and ideas rapidly, and learning how to understand the elements that make it successful is what this class is about.
We decided early on that any profits we earn will benefit the William Byrd Community House, so please donate to us today! Thanks for supporting us.

-Yvonne

Project 4063 on YouTube!

We are finally up on YouTube! We don't have any videos yet, but that should change soon. Keep posted to see videos of our class and all of the things we are doing. Subscribe to our Project 4063 YouTube Channel and keep your eye on us. Things are getting exciting!

The William Byrd Community House Vision for the Richmond, VA Community

The William Byrd House presents the Richmond community with an excellent opportunity to engage in charitable efforts. Any kind of giving, through means of time, funds, talents, etc, is accepted and beneficial to the organization. I find it interesting that few students are aware of the great volunteering opportunities available to them through this organization. Not only is volunteering personally gratifying but it also is a great resume builder. It's also awesome that the organization does so much for children, teenagers, and young adults. Though, I'm sure there are more early childhood and school age children who partake in these programs than there are young adults, it's great that people who need assistance and help in becoming self-sufficient have somewhere they can turn. I really like the vision because it is, in my opinion, quite unique. I'll end with that...

Vision

"Our vision is to be the catalyst for transforming the lives of people, particularly children and youth, by helping them move from dependency toward self-sufficiency as quickly as possible."

This vision, along with the mission statement can also be found on the organization website at http://www.wbch.org/go/about/overview/
 

Sophia's first personal blog post

This is my first post. I have absolutely no idea what to write about. The class is pretty fun so far and I think this blog is coming along well. I'm sure as this continues I'll become more involved and writing these posts will come more natually.
Anyways, here's a pic of Dave from our last class!

Volunteer at the William Byrd Community House

If you want to help us with our pet project you can donate your time directly to The William Byrd Community House! They have many volunteering options that help you get involved in people's lives or even just help stock the food pantry. The opportunities range greatly. They're always looking for more volunteers to help make the lives of Richmond children and their families better, and they are grateful for any help they can get. They can even use your special skills such as photography, dance, arts and crafts, computers, and much more.
To find out more about volunteering at the William Byrd Community House check out their website.

BLAHG!

I think I'll go ahead and fill this blog post with the most interesting little puzzle pieces that keep our class, well...insane! (In the best way, of course!) There's a lot of "Miss DiPersio driving," (keeping notes as the most swell secretary around), specials guests (aka Magzoid and others) and random conversations that begin with things like "I have 50 nicknames." There's also a lot of in-class tweeting and facebook lurking. Duh. It can basically be considered research since we're in "interactive marketing." And Dave is simply jovial, always laughing, and sometimes even throwing in his Mr. Moviefone voice. Impressive, to say the least.

When I first heard the news that Dave was giving us $500 to build a blog, I was totally shocked. But it's true! So we've got this thing called "Project 4063" underway, about to blow up, and all proceeds up to that $500 mark will benefit the William Byrd Community House. If we surpass that $500, we'll probably just plan to take over the world or something. No but really, if we can find some creative ways to make that money back, it would be awesome and we'd just pump it back into our community! Yay non-profits! I'm super anxious to see where this thing leads us. And with Miss DiPersio driving, I'm sure we're headed in the right direction! holla!

<3mel

Google Wave

As we all have learned, everything we do in life is somehow affected by Google.  Well maybe thats a bit of a stretch but i just thought i should point out that Google Wave was released to 100,000 testers yesterday.  Why is this important?  Google Wave promises to make the web even more interactive.

Google's definition: Google Wave is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Google Wave is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves.

Wave is something we should all be excited about as it can enhance the way we communicate and collaborate on ideas.  Whether you're in interactive marketing, PR, or advertising Wave offers a new tool that you can use to complete tasks faster and more efficiently.  As technology keeps advancing our online lives will continue to get more interactive.  It is necessary to embrace these new technologies and figure out how to use them for your advantage.

Here is a link to some of the extensions that have been developed for Wave during the preview.  It will be cool to see how this all may affect the way we communicate and work together in the near future.

-Tommy

No Longer Doubtful

Here I am my very first blog post. At first, I was scared and intimidated about making this blog and sharing my thoughts about our class. You can say I was the doubtful one of the group. But here we are, several weeks into class and after reading the posts from other group members, I am more than certain this blog will be successful. We have a passionate and creative team that genuinely wants to help out the William Byrd Community House.

David Saunders, who is the President and Chief Idea Officer at Madison + Main, Advertising and New Media, is our teacher of Interactive Marketing. He is a pretty cool guy and class has definently been interesting with him thus far. I can honestly say that this is the first class since coming to Virginia Commonwealth University that I haven’t wanted to skip.
Become a fan of Project 4063 on Facebook.

-Catherine

Some Information about WBCH

William Byrd Community House is a charity located in Richmond, VA, and is very helpful to the people in need in the community.  They are open Monday through Friday and offer an abundance of services.  The mission of WBCH is to create pathways for success through a variety of ways, and by delivering programs that fit the people.  One of the services they include is an after school program.  The after school program offers games, homework help, and group discussion.  The after school program serves over 80 children.  They also offer a career readiness program to young adults, to help them with life skills that are essential.  WBCH also offers a preschool program to young children.  The program offers at risk children a safe environment and maximize growth and development.  Overall, the WBCH offers a wide variety of programs offering assistance to people of all ages in the Richmond community.



- Caitlin

I need to stop calling him Madmain in public...

Here we go - obligatory blog post to get the grade. Actually, I'm not even sure we're being graded on this particular blog post. Regardless, here are a few thoughts on the class thus far.

Interactive Marketing - Let me start with Dave Saunders. Stand up guy and a real joy to have as a professor. In fact, in the four years that I have been a student at VCU I have never, ever had a professor as amiable, considerate and down-to-earth as Dave Saunders. I could further expound on my thoughts on Mr. Madmain but what I have to say may induce nausea fairly quickly.

On a serious note, I am fairly intrigued by the idea of this blog. I believe our goal is admirable and that collectively we can really achieve something worthwhile. Everyone who is a part of this project seems to be bringing something different to the table and it will be interesting to see whether the back breaking effort we're putting into this blog will pay off in the long run.

-Ana

Do what you can now

I'm excited to see where this experiment will take us. It's awesome to work with a whole class worth of people on something like this. In order to really get this thing off the ground, I think we should all think of all the most direct ways we can network and use resources from other classes to help Project 4063.

For example, in my Completeness class, we are starting a non-profit organization that will give underprivaleged kids a chance to attend events like basketball games and theater shows. We only have a facebook fan page right now, but eventually we'll have a real website that will hopefully gain attention and from there we can link to Project 4063.

Eveyone should also just takes small steps to linking people to this blog. Post a link on your facebook (under your websites, or make a note, or away status, whatever). Or link from your pre-existing blog. Anything that we can easily do now to get people to see/track this page is worth doing.

p.s. can we use a different layout? This one is boring  >_<

-Randy

First Reactions and Hopes for the Future

When I saw that an "Interactive Marketing" class was being offered here at VCU I jumped at the chance to be a part of it. Being a Creative Advertising major I'm always looking for a new way to go about publishing my work or getting my name out there. Blogs had crossed my mind as a new way advertise but I never followed through with my curiosities. When Dave first walked into our class I was a bit skeptical. He wore a sleazy car salesman smile like nobody's business and the look in his eyes suggested the use of caffeine pills but as soon as he passed out a multiple page list of terms we should know I knew that I was in for an educational experience. I have high hopes for this project of ours. I think that this blog is a great way for us to learn and for the William Byrd Community House to get a little cash on the side. I look forward to finding out what we can accomplish as a class.

-Sean

Dave knows a lot

We've been in class for several weeks now & I do have to say that I look forward to it each time. I feel that Dave would be the ultimate Trivial Pursuit partner. He's got a ton of information stored in his head. Good thing he's not all awkward-like.