Group+10



** Bianca Maderazo, Josh Falzon, MaryJayne Amos, Rania Dacion, Andre Bruzzese, Maddie Rooney **





**Operation H.O.P.E believes in helping refugee children achieve their fullest potential in education, by providing books to them as resources.**

With our main values being family, love, respect and education, we thought that the Edmund Rice Foundation would be the perfect organisation for us. The organisation helps people who don't have english as their first language such as the refugees. They assist them by giving them a better education and helping them fit in with Australia's society.
 * Organisation and Shared Values**

-To help refugees have a better future with education. -To provide a better learning environment. -To help and support the edmund rice foundation. -Making a life long difference.
 * Aim and Purpose:**

We want to be able to renovate one of their classrooms and to help provide them with a better learning environment. To help renovate, we want to re-paint the classroom in a more brighter and more colorful way which will create a better and uplifting environment. We would also like to build or obtain a a book shelf and to supply it with second-hand book that we will coolect from our community.
 * Desired Outcomes:**

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 * Our google doc link:**

6/9 RD- So far, my group has finally created a set plan on what to do which was helping the foundation by renovating on of their rooms and MAYBE (if we have the time) we might aid them by tutoring them with anything they need help with. So i guess so far, we are waiting for the GO signal so... my group has created a letter to the Edmund Rice Foundation. Just today, a member from the Western Bulldogs came over and talked about how he helps the community by supporting multiculturalism and how he helps the community. Later, all the groups split and did different activities. The activities were phone and manners, letter and emails, how to show and use respect and also meeting and greeting. This was really useful, as we are able to apply these skills when doing our outreach. This was a great day in all the learning that we did.

6/9 BM - Last week in DEAL we started choosing the foundation or group we wanted to support and that group was called the Edmund Rice Foundation. We had to choose this foundation out of ActionAid because the closest place where they helped was in Australia. We chose the Edmund Rice Foundation because it is located in our community such as St. Albans and Sunshine. We started planning on the things we want to improve, such as their learning conditions. We were thinking of having a fundraising event in school (such as a sausage sizzle) to help us get the funds for our project. Today we had a guest speaker talk to us about what the footy club, the Western Bulldogs does to help their community. They talk about helping the refugees "fit in" to Australia's society and the fundraising they do to help. We also had a rotation consisting of 4 different stations. One was about teamwork, another was about respectful support, one on how to write letters and e-mails and the last one for phone manners and meeting and greeting. It gave us really good information and tips on how to treat people and how to work together.

6-9 JF - In the past few weeks we have been discovering all the organisations we chose a organisation which was 'action aid', we then realised that wasn't the one for us so last week we found a more suitable foundation called 'edmund rice foundation' which is the one we are going with now. Today we have a quest speaker coming and with him is a photographer from the news paper.

6/9 MJA- Last Week we talked about the different possibilities and different organisations that we could help. After having a look at some organisations we came to the conclusion that we would help refugees through the Edmund rice foundation. We felt that they closely matched our values and we wanted to have a realistic and achievable difference. We chose this because it was also a community based organisation and was close to us. The centre we chose to focus on was in St.Albans, we concluded that we would try to renovate the room where the refugee children get tutored. Our plan was also to tutor the kids and spend some time with them. Today we also had a guest speaker come in and speak to us, his name was Chris and he was from the Western Bulldogs football club, he was a community worker that represented the club. He basically spoke about how the club helps communities in particular the refugee community. The thing that i got our of it was that he said that "Don't try to reinvent the Wheel". That made me realise that we needed sponsors and the support of the entire community to be able to get this done. One of the ideas we discussed was that we were going to ask a company to sponsor us and we also wanted to have a sausage sizzle to raise money for the room renovation. Along with that we wanted to ask local schools to donate unwanted books so that the children would have new resources and a better learning environment. We also had a group rotations, one of them talked about team work and work as a unit rather than individuals. Another group was respectful support which was basically learning how to treat people which the correct amount of respect. We also had a email group which told us the right ways for us to write emails to businesses and lastly we had a phone manners and meet and greet manners, we learnt the proper procedures to use when calling a business and what to do when you meet people.



13/9 BM- This morning we watched a couple of videos showing someones outreach. They did it by going all around the world and showing that music can over come barrier such as languages and culture differences. They would sing songs related to coming together like "One Love", "Stand By Me" and "Don't Worry". During period 3, 4 and a little bit of 5, we watched this movie called “Pay it Forward” and it was about this 12 year old kid who made the movement. By doing something good for one person, it inspires them to do something good to another person and so on and so forth. It was really sad, because at the end, the main character dies and he’s only 12! It makes you think about other people’s life and the things you can do to make them better and it really inspired me to help others expecting nothing in return. After watching the movie, the teachers told us to write in our blogs while listening to music. We kind of got carried away and started singing. Overall, I thought it was a really fun day!

13/9 RD- Today we watched some music videos with people singing different songs like 'one love' and 'don't worry' this was inspiring because these were people who were from all over the world singing together and they were willing to use their time to do these out reach. Later, we watched a watched a movie called 'pay it forward' which was based on an 11 year old who aimed to kind of change the world by helping 3 other people and in turn they will do the same. This was inspiring as it was possible and the evidence was the website where it showed different countries who were part of this which included, Australia, United States, South Africa 12 other countries. My ideas of a thing where you can pay it forward is maybe when someone is crossing the road, or maybe just do simple deeds around the house. Right now we are listening to inspirational music and everyone is singing along.... It;s so much fun! :)

13/9 MJA- Today we watched youtube videos about the out reach work that some people do. They sang one song and everyone from different parts of the world were singing the same song at one time. i found this inspiring because the people were not in great financial situations but they still found time to help others by doing what they loved best. We later watched a movie called "Pay It Forward".It was really inspirational because it showed a small boy with a small plan but it had such a huge impact in his community. Even thought he didn't think it was a big idea it was powerful enough to cause everyone to stop and do something positive for another person. This made me feel like I don't have to make a big change but i can make a small but significant one. This movie thought me to care about more than myself. The rest of the day was fun because we got to sing inspirational songs as a group. :)



19/9 BM - Today for DEAL we've split up into our out reach groups and talked to Ms. Elma about the things that we are planning to do and the progress that we have made during the term. We double checked with Ms. Elma seeing if our letter is exceptional. I'd like to think we've done quite a portion of things that we've had to do but of course we still have a long way to go. on 3rd and 4th period, we had a couple of guest speakers from CRC Sydenham who talked about the satisfaction and the confidence they have gained while giving back to their community. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities and the places you can go with volunteer work. They seemed really happy with what they have done for the past year or so.

20/9 MJA- Today we began the day by conferencing with Miss Elma, we double checked with her about what we should be up to. She gave us some great advice including correcting some mistakes that were in our letter. After this lesson we now have a set plan on what to do. We have delegated tasks to different members of the group. We also had guest speakers from Sydenham, three girls called Olga, Bonnie, Maria. They told us stories about their outreach work at Sydenham. It seemed common among the three of them that they do volunteer work because of the self satisfaction it gives them. I found it really amazing how dedicated they were to their work. They showed a lot of commitment and will power.

20/9 MR- Today we had our conference with our mentor Ms Elmer and we talked about our plans and our project so far. We fixed up so minor mistakes with our letter. Then Andre and myself started working on ideas for the mural we want to paint on the wall in the room for the younger children and began a sketch of what we would like to have as the mural and that will cover one wall and on the roof we will hopefully be able to put a sky theme with clouds and stars while the other walls while be just one colour most likely like a bright blue or an uplifting colour.

20/9 AB- Today in Deal we began with having a meeting with our mentor which was Miss Elma. She gave some great Ideas and feed back which could make our out reach even more effective and better. We showed her our plan on what we were doing and made sure there weren't any errors. After that lesson we had 3 guest speakers from CRC Sydenham which had done many out reach programs and community service. the three of them were dedicated to what they were doing and were very responsible. It was pretty incredible how much commitment they had. For the rest of the day I worked with my group. We came up with a Good Idea to do a mural that will cover one of the walls.



11/10 JF- Today in our groups i worked on the edmund rice house design on google sketch up. In a group we decided who we would like to contact, like libraries in the area, families in our community, etc. we also found another group that also wants to do the same as our (ask for donations of books), the group is number 13. We found out what kind of books we would like to get, as in picture books, some short and small novels, Children's books and more.

11/10 BM- I’m actually quite happy with the amount of worked we’ve done today! We actually sent the letter and we ACTUALLY got a reply on the same day! The letter was addressed to Sean McManus, but he said that he has now stepped down from being the leader of the Edmund Rice Foundation. He has sent it to the new leaders which is one less problem for us. So far, no fast reply but that hasn’t gotten our hopes down. We’ve decided to make another e-mail regarding the improvements that have already been made and about ‘other’ things that we are able to do in the foundation. This other group and ours has teamed up because both of us are hoping to obtain books from other schools and libraries. We started calling up the places and so far, had no solid luck yet. Rania and Maryjane has made a small time plan for us and we were hoping on Week 3 we have already gotten a ‘go’ sign to proceed with what we want to do and finally going to bake the cookies (We have also thought of Icy poles $1each). If there is still no response, then we will call them.

11/10 MJA- I’m really happy with the amount of work we did today. We have started contacting the foundation and some school. We sent of an email and we were glad to see a response. Although we discovered that the building we were hoping to decorate was bulldozed we were still willing to help. We are on track with what we aredoing and we hope to at least collect and donate books for the edmund rice foundation. We would also like to leave our marks by painting a mural on the walls. Right now we are planning a book drive. That is our main focus for now.

11/10 RD- Today we actually got a reply from one of the emails we sent!! BUT it wasn't the news that we expected. We discovered that the place we were hoping to repaint was bulldozed and another place has been re-painted already... Another news that we weren't expecting was the person that we emailed the letter to actually stepped down his position in VIC and i think worked in TAS so it was kind of bad luck at the time, as this has happened, in the email that was sent to us he said that he would re-send the email to other people in the Edmund Rice foundation so we still got chance to proceed our action or if not do something better. Right now we are working hard on the book drive and planning on baking cookies for the school remembering that we don't have much time left.

11/10 MR- Today we actually got a reply from one of the emails we sent which is good at least they are taking us seriously though it wasn't the news that we expected. It was discovered that the room we were hoping to repaint was bulldozed and the replacement area has been re-painted already. More unexpected news was that the person that we emailed the letter to actually stepped down his Victorian position and to my knowledge works now in Tasmania so it was kind of bad luck at the time, as this has happened, in the email that was sent to us he said that he would re-send the email to other people in the Edmund Rice foundation so we still got chance to proceed our action or if not do something better. Right now we are working hard on the book drive and planning on baking cookies for the school remembering that we don't have much time left.





18/10 JF - today in deal we have accomplished many things in our out reach groups, today Andre worked on his artwork or the mural, and also done some more work on the other colours for the other walls. We have also gotten a reply from the Edmund Rice group a couple of days a go. The email said that they would get back to us on what we can do to help and support the Edmund Rice group, I also wrote my paragraph for the group for the student bulletin, the paragraph is asking people or students with old or non-used books to hand them into us, so we can donate them to the Edmund Rice Foundation.

18/10 RD- Today i think we accomplished quite a bit in DEAL. Today Andre worked and finished on his mural (it was awesome), Josh worked on the bulletin and Bianca worked on the newsletter today as that was happening... me MJ and Maddie (and later Bianca started to help) started working on posters for the book drive coming up with a new mascot which was a B.E.E (Books. Equals. Education) still having to finish it for the next DEAL day. Hopefully we finish this soon being able to put our posters up around the school and achieving our goal.

18/10/11 BM- Yay! We ACTUALLY got a reply from Frank Perkins!! (Head director of the Edmund Rice Foundation). Unfortunately, the e-mail says that he’ll talk to his people and get back to us with another e-mail. We have started to make posters for our book drive and so far we’ve only finish 1, but don’t worry! There are about 3 more coming up! We’ve also decided on a “mascot” for some odd reason we chose a bee, but I guess I really don’t mind. We even made an acronym for it! (Books, Equals, Education). I finished a quick letter to go home to parents/guardians to the person in the office and Josh finished writing up a notice in the bulletin.

18/10 MR- Today I believe we accomplished quite a lot in DEAL. Today Andre worked on and finished on his mural which turned out fantastically, Josh worked on the bulletin, Bianca worked on the newsletter today as that was happening Rania MJ and Myself started working on posters for the book drive coming up with a new mascot which was a B.E.E (Books. Equals. Education) still having to finish it for the next DEAL day and Bianca helped out later in the day. We hope to finish this soon and begin to put our posters up around the school to help achieving our goal.



AB 25/10/11- Today in deal we have completed many things for our out reach, which includes finishing off posters and making the box that the donated books will go into. We made approximately six posters that will be hung around the school so that we get promotion and receive second hand books. earlier today we had received a message from another group that the school library will be getting rid of some old books. We thought that this was fantastic and would save a lot of time, but it is not known yet if we will get them. The box for the books will be placed at the front office were it will not only be seen by students but teachers and parents. hopefully we get enough books to give to Edmund Rice foundation.

25/10 RD- Today we finally finished our posters making them look awesome! In the process of making our poster we also made a box for our donated books and at the same time as we placed our posters around the school we put the box in the front office with the permission of the office ladies. We also double-cheked with Miss Elmer about the things we are going to say on the bulletin and thankfully, she liked it as she emailed it to the front office... Later on we called the Edmund Rice foundation leaving a message as the people weren't there to pick it up. Then after we called them, we called the public libraries and also left our information hoping to get a call back from them. I am so happy with the things we achieved today and hopefully we can continue working this hard.

25/10/11 BM- I think we worked exceptionally hard today. We finished making the posters today and made a total of 6 posters! We hung them up around the school, but I’m so worried about them falling off or getting ripped by other students. Maddie and Josh made a small box and placed it in the office where students/teachers are able to put their books they want to donate. We called the libraries, the Edmund Rice Foundation and asked them if we were allowed to volunteer for their services and they said yes. The library told us to call this girl called Christine and she was the head person or something like that. She said she would get back to us if there are some books she has to donate to us. Ms. Elmer is also helping us by donating some of her unwanted books too!

25/10 MR- I think we worked extremely hard today to get as much as we could finish in todays lessons, we accomplished our goal from last week and finished making the all the posters ending up with total of 6 posters which we then hung up around the school in what we saw as prominent places, but I am concerned about them falling off or getting destroyed by other students. Josh and I began making a small box and placed it in the office where students/teachers are able to put their books they want to donate though Josh soon gave up and I was left to finish it. We called the libraries, the Edmund Rice Foundation and asked them if we were allowed to volunteer for their services and they said that it would be fine. The library told us to call a woman named Christine and she was handling all the donations for the library or was the head of a certain sector I'm not sure exactly but it was something along those lines. She said she would get back to us if there are some books she can donate to our cause. Ms. Elmer is also giving us a good start by donating some of her unwanted books.



08/11/11 JF - last tuesday, we were not at school for melbourne cup, so we missed another D.E.A.L lesson. In our group we are trying to catch up on work that we missed. Yesterday we had Peter, from Edmund rice, call Ms Elmer, later today we will try calling him. We are hoping we can help them. We have thought of a few ideas to try and promote the book donations, like, making bookmarks to give out to advertise what we want. Making some kind of brochures to give out on the art night to the parents, so the parents will see it as well as the students. Today we have been told that Ms Elmers mum is coming in to talk to us. She works with children and does similar things to what we want to do for our outreach programs.

8/11 RD- Having missed last Tuesdays class because of the public holiday we have to work harder. Although other then that, we received a call from Peter Hay but unfortunately we weren’t there to pick it up. After that, Miss Elmer told us went to our group and talked to us about where we were up to and how are things going on. From this talk we got the idea of making a poster to send off to every homeroom (which i did), while that was happening Josh did the bookmarks that we were going to give away with the books. Soon we started calling Peter Hay back, but unfortunately no one answer, so we kind of hit a wall because we weren’t sure how we were going to move on with this foundation or go with another. In period 3 and 4 we went to the library and continued are work there, and with a few minutes within the period the group Community Minded United received books from the library and promised us to give us a box or 20-30 books, which was very helpful for our project. Soon, we called a person named Cristina who worked in the Brim bank area’s libraries, we asked if they could donate to us so we can donate to the Edmund Rice Foundation but soon found that they were already donating to our charity which made us hit a dead end and in addition to that they couldn’t donate to us because we weren’t in there area, so that info made us down for a while.In period 5 and 6 ms Elmer’s mum came in a talked to us about what she did and ideas that might help us with out outreach and thankfully it did help, because she gave us the idea of not giving up and also just keep persisting no matter how hard the task. Also, she helped us make a timeline of what we should do. Soon, Maddy called Frank Perkins again and he actually answered! And in addition to that he told us that he would accept our books that we want to donate, so he is coming on Tuesday next week at around 10:00am. We accomplished a lot today and i hope we finish this project by the deadline.

8/11 MJA- Due to a session of D.E.A.L being missed last tuesday we had to work really hard to catch up on the work we missed. We found out that Frank Perkins had contacted Miss Emler, which was good to hear. We were really happy he made contact after weeks of failure. We had ideas about making brochures but, we were happy with Josh’s Idea of book Marks. We had a brief talk with Miss Elmer about what our next step was, she told us that it would be a good idea to print and make posters to put in each homeroom so that they can be reminded to donate books to the cause. We also made a call to the brim bank Library and we found out that they already donated books to the edmund rice foundation. From then on it seemed that things were going down hill, because we weren't getting books from our drive and the other group Community Minded United had promised to give us books but had failed. We told Miss Elmer about our problems and she said that her mother was an Experienced volunteer and that she would be able to advice us as to what our next step was. In Period Five and Six Mrs Elmer gave us a talk and we were in a very engaging conversation about what we should do. She ended up telling us that we needed a plan about where we want to be next week. She appointed Maddie to calls, Josh to Bookmarks and me to organisation. Maddie and Josh had Rania and Andre to help. Maddie called Frank a few minutes after the discussion and we were glad to here that he wanted to pick up the books next tuesday. We finally are getting somewhere after lots of trials and errors. Our deadline must be met if not we are screwed.

8/11 MR- Last week being Melbourne cup weekend we missed our DEAL lesson so we have had to try to get as much as we possibly could done today. Earlier on we started to loose hope in doing the edmund rice foundation because the libraries we contacted couldn't give us any books because we were not in the right area, also they already give book donations to edmund rice as well as numerous other charities. Though later in the day our hope was renewed when Ms.Elmer brought in her mum Mrs.Elmer to help us because she used to work with refugees and she knew a lot about what we were doing so she helped us organise a plan of action. We then went through and gave each person in the group had a job to do, I don’t know what each persons responsibilities but I do remember Josh was in charge of the bookmarks and my Responsibility was to call Frank Perkins everyday at 10am and 2pm until we got aholed of him because we are running out of time before the end of the term. After we finished the meeting we had just enough time to make a call before school finished and luckly I was able to catch him with the first call, he was very happy with what we were doing and we organised that he would come to pick up the books we had collected at 10am Tuesday week. So overall today went rather well.



15/11 AB- During period one and two of Deal today we were basically finalizing the book marks which josh made. We cut out the book marks and and stuck them together and my job was to cut out any white edges left on the book marks. In total there were about 80 book marks but we came up with idea of printing another 80 of them so that we can put four book marks in each homeroom tub to promote what we are doing. When It got to period two we were told Frank Perkins from Edmund Rice Foundation was going to come to pick up the books we are donating. For the rest of the day we were laminating, cutting and pasting the bookmarks. Hopefully by doing all this work we will get some books.

15/11 BM- This was my first DEAL class in a while so I had to talk to some of people in my group to see what we were doing. Unfortunately, we couldn't volunteer because we were too young but they said we could volunteer for next year! Also, we apparently FINALLY got in contact with the Frank Perkins guy. HE WAS COMING TODAY AT 10:00AM!! O:!!! We were going to donate our books to the foundation, hand picked up (ohhh yeahh).I couldn't believe it! We also got quite a collection of books as well. (too bad most of them were all from Ms. Dishon. I wish the school participated more) For the first and second period we mostly got ready with what were going to say to the Director and when he finally came, I was so happy we came this far. Towards the middle of the day, we started cutting out MORE bookmarks. We already had 80, but I guess the more the better. Josh and Andre laminated while the rest of us were cutting and gluing. We had to do a group reflection by ourselves and that's all we did!

15/11 RD- WOW we have made it really far!!! Today a guy named Frank Perkins came in and picked up our books at 10:00pm and not only that we finished ALL our bookmarks. When Frank Perkins came in we introduced ourselves then took a picture, after that we went to Ms Elmer Frank inspired us more about the work that he does like working in places, overseas (like in the philippines) then after knowing his work more, we went and gave him tour of the school. After the tour of the school we gave the box of books to him and placed it in his car (thankfully it was a box full but only, if there was more), when we placed the books in his car we went and took another picture then he left. After our mission being accomplished we felt SO HAPPY and more inspired to help more people. So from that experience we still continued the book drive hoping to get more books. We then completed the bookmarks, so we cut, glued, laminated, cut again; from that we went to the office and placed the bookmarks into the homeroom tubs hoping that people would get them. After all the hard work, we worked on our reflection on the outreach and finished the day with that.

15/11 MJA - Today we had to work really hard, because Frank Perkins was coming at 10:00am to pick up all the books we collected. We also finished our bookmarks in total about 160 and we distributed it to all homerooms and staff. When Frank came he seemed really pleased with our efforts and he took a photo with us and Miss Elmer. We then took frank on a tour around the school to all places. We were really happy that we had successfully completed our outreach. We were informed that we could get into the tutoring program next year because it had already reached the end of the year. Although we are finished we will still try to provide more books to the Edmund Rice. Our hope now is that the children appreciate these books by reading. Im really happy with our efforts and our main focus now is to get our reflection down and formally complete our Outreach.

15/11 MR- Today we had a lot to do first we got all our books together and repaired a few and sorted through all the books to see what was appropriate for our target age group before Frank Perkins came to collect them at 10:00am. We donated 80 books which was realy good but i think we could have got more if we had more time Mr. Perkins spoke with our teacher Ms. Elmer and said he would be happy to have us help out as tutors at the homework club next year if we would like to help which is great. Before he left we took some photo’s with him and gave him a tour of the school, then once he was gone we spent the rest of our day finishing the bookmarks i think we ended up with like 160 bookmarks in the end which we then seperated amongst the homeroom tabs as well as handing out quite a few. So overall it has been a productive day.

22/11 AB- During todays Deal lesson we have been gathering information and evidence of work that we have done throughout the unit. This work will be presented to our mentor Miss Elmer at one stage during the day. When we present our work to her she is going to ask a couple of questions about the outreach program and she will give us a final mark on the effort of work we have put into this project. In period one and two we were making our blog more presentable by adding more color and picture's. When it got to period 5 it was time to present our work to our mentor. Miss Elmer was pretty impressed by the amount of work we did and what we came up with. So overall it has been a successful day for us.