Group13

=__//**Community Minded United**//__=

Hayden Spiteri, Darcy Ellis, Joshua Pereira, Sean Santiago, Keegan Croucher, Daniel Raberts.

Organisation and Shared Values

 * Trust
 * Dedication
 * Appreciation
 * Love
 * Respect

Aim and Purpose:
Our aim and purpose is to help the less privileged children in our city to be able to have an opportunity to contribute as active participants in society. To do this they need to learn the necessary skills of reading and writing, so that they are better able to interpret and understand ideas and concepts. We envision a group with an ambitious approach to our goals. However, we need support from our targeted organisation and the help of several other sources to be able to undertake our mission to the best of our capabilities. Our group intends to achieve most, if not all our goals by the end of the allocated 8 week period. Given that the operation is a success, we may discuss internally options as to how we may be able to help out more and assist in future ventures.

Desired Outcomes:

 * Our goal is to bring as many books as possible to the children in under privileged situations and give them the best possible chance to achieve their goals.
 * To be able to host spelling bees and various other language competitions to sharpen and motivate children to read and write.
 * Have story reading sessions to be able to aid children in imaginative thinking and creativity.
 * To allow children to discover more about the wider world and what reading/writing opportunities are available to them.

Questions you need to ask and answer:
How far do we want to be able to push this project?

Will the organisation be supporting us with our aim?

Is this project going to benefit the organisation?

How will we contact the organisation?

How will we persuade the organisation to let us help out?

Will the intended targets appreciate our ideas?

Is the project going to be a success?

What are the possible barriers we may face?

Are we aiming to be a positive influence on literacy?

Who is willing donate books and funds?

When will we participate in these literacy sessions?

Year 9 outreach page:
Copy and paste the following link into the URL bar, if directly clicking the site address does not work. voicethread.com/share/2428072/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JJRBLMpGhez6HNAlpnwtXoFh6b-v04KPVsKTX7s84lQ/edit?hl=en_US

Blog of progress -
This is where you write you weekly or daily achievements and logging of events.

31/8 DE- Today we have decided on what action we are going to undertake to help the organisation. Our group decided to help the literacy fund and came up with various ideas on different methods of outreach. We have contacted the literacy co-ordinater of the school and asked if she could assist us with our aim. Today was productive although there is still much more work needed to be complete in order to complete this project.

6/9 DR - Today the Community Minded United group is working on our new Wikispaces blogging page. This page explains who we are and what are goals for this group are. We also had a mystery guest speaker from the <span style="border-bottom-color: #0066cc; border-bottom-left-radius: 2px 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px 2px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 2px 2px; border-top-right-radius: 2px 2px; border-top-width: 0px; clear: none; color: inherit; display: inline; float: none; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; top: -1px; width: auto;">Western Bulldogs. He was a from the Bulldogs' teaching area and gave us a lot of stats on the ethnicity of people in the Western Metropolitan area and how our influence is vital for the improve of the livelihoods of the people. Today we also viewed a document regarding how to deal with people that had language barriers, it was a bit of an eye opener because I thought that repetition and raising my voice would be beneficial but I have learned it does not. I also learned that something that may considered friendly or welcoming in one culture who prove to be offensive or even threatening in another. It was food for thought.

6/9 DE- Today we have the ability to work on our wiki spaces page and fill in the sub-headings as well as blog. We also were fortunate enough to have a guest speaker representing the Western Bulldog Out Reach program. The speaker informed us on the different programs and activities they participate in and how they help the community.

6/9 HS - Today we learnt different ways to talk and approach the person we will be dealing with when we have a meeting or have to call or send an email to them to organise how we will help the community that is in need through the organisation we choose, in our case its the aboriginal literacy foundation. We had a guest speaker some in and talk about how the western bulldogs support the community and what kinda of different things they do, the guest speaker also talked about his position as manager of the community support provided by the western bulldogs football team, there was also a photographer/reporter for the newspaper that will hopefully make an article on our guest speakers appearance and what we are doing. Towards the end of the day we worked on our google docs document and saved it onto "Edmodo" and got all the details done on there.

6/9 DE - Today we worked through different rotations. Each rotation we learnt important skills which will help us with our outreach program. The first rotation we worked in was the card building with Ms Saunders. This activity revolved around us stacking the cards in order to build a building of some sort. This activity wasn't only about building but to see how different people worked in groups and how they approached their building strategy. We then went worked at Ms Gilbert's rotation which consist of tips on how to speak and work with foreign people. I found this very useful as our group is going to work with people who have troubles speaking English. Ms Williams groups was next as she gave us vital tips on sending a email and letter. This rotation is extremely important as every group is needed to contact their organisation. The phone etiquette rotation was our final rotation and we learnt skills on how to speak on the phone as well as few role plays with Ms Pham and Ms Jossip.

13/9 DR- Today we viewed a video on YouTube about people from around the world making music collaboratively. It was really nice because I'm now convinced that music can be used to unite people because, in a way, it is a common language and this is a beautiful way to truly unite people despite their social, political and economic boundaries that may hold them away from each other. Then we were given time to update our Wikispaces page, I feel that we have been a little slower than normal with updating the page because we have a few people away. We are also aiming to have more posts more often from other group members, we will soon look to rectify this minor issue. After that we started to listen to music from an array of artists and dissecting the messages in the music lyrically and instrumentally. The two classes then watched the movie 'Pay it forward' which was about a boy named Trevor who came up with an idea of doing favours 3 people, these people would then go and do favours for another 3 people each and so on. The movie allowed us to see that even the most simple of ideas can grow and be fostered with great support and determination behind it. After this we watched YouTube videos on various singers, singing about love, unity and harmony in the world.

13/9 DE - Today in D.E.A.L we were shown others people outreach and different ideas they had to help donate to the community. The in particular video that spoke to me was the "Stand by me" song which was performed by artist all around the world. This song was 100% charitable and it was interesting to see how people all over the nation contributed. Some people contributed by singing others by playing instruments but all helped in the creation of this song. The music shown the collaboration between people and how they come together to help. I believe this video inspired all the groups and later we will have the opportunity to experiment with our Macs to create a song similar to the ones shown on YouTube.

13/9 DE - Today we viewed a movie titled "<span style="border-bottom-color: #0066cc; border-bottom-left-radius: 2px 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px 2px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-left-radius: 2px 2px; border-top-right-radius: 2px 2px; border-top-width: 0px; clear: none; color: inherit; display: inline; float: none; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; top: -1px; width: auto;">Pay It Forward " which depicted how something small can explode and create an international movement. The film main character was a boy with a vision to change the world. His vision originated from a social studies assignment where he called his project "Pay it Forward". Pay It Forward​ consist of doing a major deed for three people and asking them to continue the cycle. In the movie we see how this cycle continues and becomes an international movement. This film is such a inspiration that is has inspired people to Pay It Forward​ to people in our society. There was also a Pay It Forward​ day where people asked to do a deed for three people big or small which was an international success.

20/13 DE - Today in D.E.A.L we had lots of time to work on our projects. We first started working on our proposal to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation which we then sent later on. There was also a miscommunication between group members which resulted in missing out on our arranged meeting. We contact Ms Hamill apologising and asked if we could re-schedule our meeting to a later date. We also were fortunate enough to have the justice group from CRC Sydenham speak to the year level and tell us about their experiences. They explained to the year level that they had put in a extreme amount of work but it was worth it as it gave them great satisfaction and made them a better person. It was interesting to hear the different things they had participated in and gave us some helpful advice.

20/9 SS- Today we contacted our organisation "The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation" to organise what we could do to help them, we have discussed with Miss Elmer about what we should do and the cautions in doing so. We also watched a short documentary received from Mrs Saunders about the education of aboriginal students and their families. We composed a letter for Mrs Hamill to request a meeting to discuss our ideas to her and to probably get some more tips and information. We also composed a letter to the "Aboriginal Literacy Foundation" in hope that the members of that organisation can respond back to us and probably negotiate and organise something to help the Aboriginal children. In my opinion, I am pretty confident that we can successfully pull off this task.

11/10 DR - In D.E.A.L today we have been working on our outreach group project involving the creation of our new foundation website and also the creation of our logo. We are a little low on numbers in our group today as some members have had other commitments to attend to. We have also been in talks with the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation regarding our Outreach project and how we may be of assistance to them. We feel like we are in a privileged position, given that the foundation we are aiming to support has laid out some ideas on how our group may be involved. The group is now looking at options as to how we may be able to raise funds, such as books and money from various companies and organisations. We currently face a minor issue as other groups are attempting to contact organisations in common with us, but discussions should resolve the matter. Later today we will be sort out our equipment for camp and hopefully Camp Otway will be great fun.

11/10 HS - Today in DEAL we replied back to the aboriginal literacy foundation from when they said they were happy for us to contribute to their cause. I made a website for the group and we made a logo with photoshop and paintbrush for the website and wiki. We contacted Miss Hamel about organizing a way to get books so that we can supply them to the aboriginal literacy foundation.

11/10 DE - In D.E.A.L we have had a very productive day. We have received a email and replied to the Aboriginal LIteracy Foundation. They have explained that they are more than happy to take us on board and made our lives much easier. All members of the group weren't here but we managed to get a lot completed. Our group has created a website with information about community minded united and things we aim to accomplish. We also created a logo with programs on our macs. We emailed Caroline Springs Library asking them for support and donations. Not only donations but ideas or suggestions they have for our group.

18/10 DE - We have received another email response from the 'Aboriginal Literacy Foundation'. They have been nothing but supporting and really helping us and exceptionally. They have suggested that we should put up some posters around the school asking for book and money donations. We have discussed ideas with the other group who is doing similar to us and together created a letter to be presented in the newsletter and bulletin. We have decided on a logo for Community Minded United.

18/10 SS - In D.E.A.L we have received an email from the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation saying that they need books and thanking us for our support and we responded back to them saying that we can help and we are dedicated to achieve our goals to help them. We have also teamed up with another group that has roughly the same cause as us and we sent an email to Miss Elmer the information for the school newsletter. I wrote an email to Miss Hamill to plan a time so we can talk about our project. Later on the day, she responded say that she is available to talk about the project. We also created a logo for our team and we are planning to produce posters to display around the school grounds. As a group we are working well together and we are accomplishing a lot of things. I am confident we will be quite successful on our project.

18/10 DR - In D.E.A.L we have been working on our projects and we have been sending letters to the organisation, The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation. We have now created logos and emblems for which our group may be presented and we have tried to working the Operation H.O.P.E to create advertisements and notices in the bulletin regarding our situation and how we want to raise money and funds to give to our desired organisation. We have been progressing really well and the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation has been assisting us with advertisements mediums and methods, which has made it considerably easier for us. Today has been a day of solid work which has made me happy. Hopefully we are able to raise the funds, books and money we need for the foundation.

25/10 SS - In D.E.A.L our group the "Community Minded United" outreach team received an email from the Caroline Springs Library saying that they are willing to offer some books to support our cause to assist with the Aboriginal children. The library asked us how much books we need for our cause. After reading that we wrote down that we could accept as many books as they can offer to us. Later that day, we had an appointment to meet Mrs Hamill in periods 3 and 4 to discuss where we are at and what are some ideas we could propose to do. The discussion lasted for over 90 minutes and we came out with many ideas we could do like ideas to how to collect books, raise money and raise Aboriginal education awareness to the school community. We plan to communicate to more book stores, publishers and we are also planning to comunicate to famous and rich people (it won't hurt to try). Mrs Hamill also broadened our horizons to how much things we could do to achieve what we are supposed to be doing. As a group, we are doing very well in my opinion. We are communicating a lot with each other and we are achieving a lot still. We hope to raise as much awareness, books and money as possible.

25/10 KC - In D.E.A.L our group received an email from the Caroline Springs Library saying they were willing to give books to us but needed to know how many we wanted we were thinking about how many later that day we had a meeting with Mrs Hamill we talked about what we should do if we need more books.

25/10 DR - D.E.A.L was really productive today. The first thing that we did was check our E-Mails, we noticed that we received a message from the Caroline Springs Library in regards to our request for donations from them. The library had enquired about what type books we needed and how many we wanted. Ideally, we wanted as many books as possible. The group planned that a number of 50 books or more was a reasonable minimum. Afterwards in period 3-4 we went down to the library to have a meeting with Ms Hamill about our ideas and plans for the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation but also for Community Minded United. It was a fairly engaging and in depth conversation that lasted well over an hour. The topics discussed included: Raising awareness in the school community about the Aboriginal Literacy plight, ways in which we may be able to raise funds for the foundation, collection of books and possibly equipment. The meeting was a great learning experience and it opened our mind as to what is available for us as a group, but more importantly the foundation.

25/10 DE - Today in D.E.A.L we accomplished many things. We received an response from the Caroline Springs Library in regards to the donation of books. The Library was more than happy for us to collect their unwanted books. During periods 3 and 4 we headed down to the library to have a meeting with Ms Hamill. Ms Hamill was extremely helpful and raised various ideas of how we could assist the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation. Ms Hamill really guided us and benefited our group majorly.

25/10 JP Today in D.E.A.L, our group went to go see Ms Hamill about our ideas and plans for the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation but also for Community Minded United. She gave us a lot of ideas about how to raise money and who we could go to, to see if they could give us some books to donate to the foundation. She gave us ideas like on a school day during lunch time, we could set up a competition on who can throw the boomerang the furthest, and who can make the best beat using a didgeridoo

8/11 KC - Today in D.E.A.L we went to the library to collect the books. Ms Hamill came with us and she helped us out with the collection of the books. Mandi was kind enough to give us a lot of books and it was fairly good to see the library offer us so many books. Then we went back to the school and we sorted out the books and repaired some of the damaged books that we had received. Today was a good day because we got the books that we have wanted and worked hard to get there.

8/11 SS - Today in D.E.A.L the Community Minded United group have planned to go to the Caroline Springs Library to pick up over 70 children’s (aged 10 and under) books for us to kindly donate to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation. Before we went there, we got permission from each of our parents and our group gained permission from Miss Elmer to enter the library. We also made an arrangement with Mrs Hamill to help us load the books from the Library to school and she also helped us restore the damaged books by giving us the equipment necessary to fix them. After we did that we sent an email thanking the Caroline Springs Library for their help and we are ready to send these books to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation. As a group, we are doing very well, we have accomplished many of our goals and we are happy of our achievements, a very good morning start. We are still planning to contact the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation for delivering the books. A big thanks to the Caroline Springs Library and to Mrs Hamill for their help and patience, we couldn't have done it without them.

8/11 DE - In D.E.A.L today we have spiraled through our tasks and goals. In the morning we called the Caroline Springs Library and organised a suitable time were we could pick up the books they have kindly donated. After filling in paper work and receiving permission we walked down to the Library we were collected the books. To our surprise there was over 50 books. Once back at school we spent our time searching through the books and repairing any damages. With 5 members of our group we did it with exceptional pace and now continue working on emails to The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation. We have to decide how we are going to deliver the books to the foundation. A thank-you letter has been sent to the Caroline Springs Library thanking them and showing our appreciation to their kind donations.

8/11 DR - Today was probably one of the most important days in our D.E.A.L calendar. This morning D.E.A.L started without many group members as they has other commitments to attend to. This limited the work we were able to do. However, we were soon back in full flight and were able to get firing on our project. We had checked our E-Mails and had discovered that the librarian, Mandi had messaged us saying that she had the books we wanted for donation ready for collection. With assistance from Ms Hamill and Ms Elmer we soon ventured off to the library to collect the books that we needed. Afterwards we came back to school and sorted out all the books. We also intend to E-Mail the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation advising them that we have received the books and we are looking forward to sending it to them. Today has been a great day as we have achieved half our goal.

8/11 JP - Today during D.E.A.L our group went to Caroline Springs Library to collect our books for the Aboriginal Literacy foundation and we brought them back to school. From there we took all the books out to see what condition they were in and stuck tape on any of the rips and tried to repair any of the damaged spines. Ms Hamill has been a really big help to our group and we all are very thankful for her consideration.

15/11 DE - Today in D.E.A.L we have conducted The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation on the phone. A man from the Aboriginal Literacy was kind enough to offer to come pick up the books on Thursday between 12pm - 1pm. This was very convenient and our group are continuing to work very hard. We had to go and inform the office on the man picking up the books and write a letter that can be documented for his arrival. Our group and Operation Hope went down to speak to the year 7 and 8s asking them to donate some spare books suitable for children under 10 years old and if they can drop them off in the box at the front office.

15/11 HS Today in deal we called the aboriginal foundation and somebody that works there is going to come and were gonna give them the books on thursday. Then we went to the library to share some books with the other group because they couldn't get enough books. Lately i have been working on the google doc criteria assessment and we have been constantly updating our evidence. Before i went down to Ms Spiteri's class (room 18) and told them that they could donate books to our cause for the aboriginal literacy foundation. After recess we went to the library and took photos with the books that got donated to our cause and we were supposed to do it with the logo but we didn't, after that we printed the logo that Josh made. Those logo was stuck onto the boxes of the books.

15/11 DR - In D.E.A.L we have been working on our criteria and also liaised with members from the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation about collecting the books that we have had kindly donated to us from the school, CRCCS. A man has willingly offered to come to the school on Thursday the 24th between 12PM and 1PM. We have had a group, Operation H.O.P.E request form books which have now been donated. Members of the group have been going to classrooms discussing the need for books and hope to be able to donate some more books than we currently have. Donating the books to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation is the final step in our project and should be the most defining moment in the whole project as the the books will finally be going off to children that are greatly in need of the books. It will also be one of our last D.E.A.L lessons so it will be the end of Community Minded United, hopefully not forever. Today has been a good day in terms of finding our progressive standpoint and hopefully we should be able to complete all required tasks in the near future.

15/11 SS- Today in D.E.A.L we started our day with a phone call to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation about donating our donated books to them. The Aboriginal Literacy Foundation was happy to accept them and they were willing to pick them up by hand so they planned to travel to our school to collect them on Thursday the 17th of November 2011 (two days from now). We also kindly gave some books to our fellow partner group Operation H.O.P.E because they were in need for some books for their project as well. In period 3 today I created a document for the office that there will be a person representing the Aboriginal Foundation to pick up the books. Our group is also working together on the criteria sheet which we are doing and we are doing things like taking pictures of our books we collected, we printed out the symbol of our group and we also created more documents to act as our evidence. Together with Operation H.O.P.E, we announced our request to different classes about donating books for our causes and that they can donated the books to the front office for us to collect (I hope this works). As a group, we are doing well. We are working together well and we are doing our own individual tasks, I believe we are very close to achieving our main goal about donating books to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation. We are now at our second-last lesson completing this task in D.E.A.L and I believe we have done what we were supposed to do from the beginning.

15/11 KC - Today in D.E.A.L we went all around the school asking about donating books. It was good because we really want more books to give to the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation

17/11 SS- Today at Thursday the man came to our college during lunchtime to collect the books that we gathered with the help of many people. The man was very grateful for our contribution. One he packed all the books in his car, he said that he will give us certificates for our effort in helping their community; he also said that he will give some pictures of the children thanking us for our help. It was a pretty quick visit though so were unable to get some photos about it. We were happy of our achievements and we got a sense of closure for the action section of our task.

22/11 HS - Last thursday we gave the books Lachlan from Aboriginal Literacy Foundation for him to come and pick up for us, he said he would be sending us a certificate and was very pleased with our donation. Today we finished off the outreach program by making the powerpoint presentation of our evidence. We presented our evidence to Ms Elmer with all our work. The presentation went well and i think we did quite good.

22/11 DE- Today was our last D.E.A.L session and our the work we have completed needed to be presented with evidence to our teacher. Our group members worked together in creating a presentation that can be presented to the teacher. The presentation contained evidence and displayed to the teacher. The teacher asked questions and gave us positive criticism on how we could conduct ourselves better within this project. Overall she was pleased and happy with the work we have completed in regards to outreach. After that we worked on our individual evidence. I gathered emails conversations, photos and work completed throughout the completion of this project. Now we have officially finished our outreach program and Community Minded United and I are satisfied with the result we have achieved.

22/11 SS- Today is a day of closure of the Outreach Program for me today, our group collected all the information we have ever done in this topic and stuck it in a powerpoint ready to show in front of the teacher. I am proud to say that we have done what we needed to do and we have collected the books needed for our donation. I am also proud to say that the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation is grateful for our contribution. We collected all our evidence of our project individually and we sent it to Miss Elmer to assess it. After the long journey we went through, we came out successful. We couldn’t have done it without Miss Elmer, the Caroline Springs Library and most importantly Mrs Hamill for sacrificing their time for our cause. Thanks to them, we have donated around 100 books to the aboriginal children and they now have more resources they can learn from. As a group we have done very well, there have been difficulties because of decisions we had to decide on but I believe we were all in the same page and worked together quite well. The Outreach Program made me learn a very big value: to change the world no matter how small we are, we can make a difference. A very valuable journey and I am happy to be a part of it.

22/11 DR - D.E.A.L was a really interesting day. This was our final Outreach day and D.E.A.L day for the year. In the morning briefing, Mr. Jilbert advised about what we have had do for today and that our time was limited. Then the Community Minded United resumed creating a keynote presentation which documented the evidence of work which we had completed throughout the semester. After we had concluded with our task, the group decided to present it to our mentor, Ms Elmer. Ms. Elmer seemed reasonably please with the work that we had completed. She then delivered some home truths about the efforts of members within the group. The feedback session, whilst honest, was re-freshening because it allowed me and my team members to understand more about our abilities, where we achieved and where we fell short. Thereafter, the group began to collect evidence and data that supported our individual performances throughout the Outreach program. The evidence that I gathered was of the many activities and tasks that I had undertaken and also of the phones calls that were made by members of the group and myself. It is satisfying that we have completed our Outreach tasks and to know that we have made a difference in our community, but also other communities throughout the entirety of Australia.

22/11 JP - Today was really good. In the morning we had to complete a keynote presentation that included all the evidence of the groups work. Later on, Community Minded United had a meeting with Ms. Elmer about the progress of the group. Afterwards we worked on our criteria sheet which was mostly completed. However, we nearly lost all our information because a rogue Google docs user was deleting all our work. The group then informed Ms. Elmer of the situation. It was later rectified when the group was able to recover the lost data. Then we collected evidence about our individual efforts, which will be assessed by the teachers. Overall, today was pretty interesting.