It comes to a close....

After 7 weeks of working to improve the holiday season for homeless female Veterans, and to bring much-needed attention to their cause, our project is coming to a close. Tomorrow, I will be at school bright and early to hand off the tree and accompanying gifts to a representative from Final Salute Inc. While nothing we can contribute will ever be enough to help this deserving group, we feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to become more familiar with this group and with the people at Final Salute who are working tirelessly to help them. As Final Salute's founder emailed recently, "Giving is never too small, everything makes a difference in their lives". This is a sentiment we should all carry with us. It's easy to think that we cannot, as individuals, make a difference for a group or cause. It's important to remember that every little bit helps in the lives of those in need. This is such a great way to finish up the semester and head into the holidays. Hopefully our small effort will help to improve the holidays for homeless female Veterans in the DC area!

Have you seen this posterboard?

I still would really like to know what happened to the posterboard. It was a great accessory to the tree, and had some more information both the Giving Tree and Finale Salute, as well as team member names in case inquisitive minds in the Commons wanted to know more. It just disappeared and I guess I am a bit in disbelief that we weren't notified about it. This is because I suspect whoever took it down didn't appreciate that it was covering the Connelly Commons plaque.

That aside, I know that our project caught the attention of many. When I was putting up the posterboard, some first year students actually came up to me and began talking about the tree and the project. The best moment by far was when our classmate came back from the Georgetown bookstore and handed over a gift card for $25, announcing it was for the Final Salute project. Realizing that people were touched and that our concept of the Giving Tree actually had such positive reactions was an amazing feeling. It really does give me hope that, if the right message reaches the right people, the hardships of many people will be lessened. It also gives me hope that, now that more people know about the concept of a Giving Tree, it will be implemented more commonly. It really is such a great idea and a perfect vehicle for helping others during the holiday season.

As we come to the conclusion of this project, I realize it was great to see many of the principles of creative thinking at play. As I commented to a team member, its easy to think these concepts are easily executable, but they do in fact require conscious implementation and maintenance. It was really wonderful to put them to use in an exercise that revealed their value, and also made a contribution to people who really deserve it. 

Preparing for the Hand-off

We are entering the final days of our project; the Giving Tree's days are numbered. (At least in its current location.)

This Saturday, December 21, representatives from Final Salute will arrive at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business to pick up a Christmas tree, and gifts that were collected during our group's "Making a Difference" project.

As Rick mentioned earlier, we are creating a YouTube video to help raise awareness of Final Salute's worthy cause.

Here's a link to the work-in-progress version (we'll post the finished version soon):

Click Here

We look forward to presenting the tree and gifts to Final Salute, and hope that they will help to raise spirits during the holiday season!

You can find more information about Final Salute here:

Final Salute Webpage

If pictures are worth 1,000 words, this is a really long post

In the spirit of the 12 Days of Christmas,

12 photos from the creation of the Giving Tree

M tidying up the ribbon

M, R & T in an otherwise empty Commons...because it's 10:30am on a Sunday

T hard at work on donation ornaments

Each ornament with a specific gift meeting the needs of homeless female veterans

The ornaments start finding their way to the tree

 

But only after they get hooked by M

Progress...

Our star is ready to make its way to the tree top

But we're going to need somebody taller than T

Front and center, the purpose of the tree is displayed

With those antlers, M is about as tall as the tree!

The finished product....minus the donated gifts

Filming

We're currently in the process of wrapping up our project to bring attention and awareness to the issue of homeless female veterans.  Since I was involved in filming the clips that became the tail end of our YouTube video, I'm going to speak a little about that. 

As a group, we knew that we wanted our video to tell some type of story.  We also wanted to motivate others by illustrating that giving back or getting involved did not require some type of Herculean effort. 

I was watching TV a few days prior to filming and saw a commercial where the actor seamlessly moved through various phases of life by simply walking through a series of doors.  I thought the idea was kind of clever and wanted to see if we we could use a similar strategy for our video.  On the way to school to set up the tree, I also heard a song on the radio that had an appropriate tone for the message we were trying to convey.

We filmed a series of short clips to illustrate how the tree worked.  In the first clip, I took a paper ornament from the tree and walked out the door.  From there you see me going to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to retrieve the items and then back home to wrap them up.  In the final scene, you see me walking back into school and placing the gift at the foot of the tree where several others are located. 

To provide a little more context about our cause, Teri and Marin decided that our video needed a brief introduction, and they created a set of slides to give the viewer more context about Final Salute and our project. 

Finally, with some clever editing, Marin brought the whole thing together into the finished YouTube video. 

The Reel Deal

The filming process began today. As a part of our project, we will present a first draft of a video to our classmates on Thursday. The objective of the video is simple. It is an easy-to-use form of media that can be used by Final Salute in their own promotional efforts of this very serious issue. 

In discussing our vision for the video, we realized that its an effective way to communicate how easy to it is to make a difference in the lives of others. It will trace the steps we will be taking with the Giving Tree and further highlighting the reality facing many veterans. 

As we began filming today, many of the creative concepts we discuss in class came up. We realized that different perspectives add a level of richness that makes messaging that much more resonating. We also saw firsthand that with more iterations come a more developed end result. Finally, we understood the importance of storytelling, in order to create a clear picture that will have an impact on the viewer, so that he or she is moved to make a difference. 

Our filming will continue throughout the week and we are excited to have a final product that can be used toward a greater good. Stay tuned ...

Today we delivered a Christmas tree to a common area of the business school building at Georgetown University. The tree will serve a duel purpose; it will help to add holiday cheer to an otherwise mundane space, and much more importantly, it will be a Giving Tree.

The Giving Tree will be covered in colored paper ornaments, each with a gift request. The gifts will help support Final Salute, Inc. We are working to bring awareness to the organization and to help these amazing women and their children have a better holiday season.

http://www.finalsaluteinc.org/

We are hoping Georgetown MBAs will help us to provide:

- Gifts cards to grocery stores, Walmart, Target, etc.
- Towel sets for use in their transitional housing
- Twin, full and queen sized bedding for use in their transitional housing

We are very excited to support this worth cause, and hope people give generously to those in need during the Holidays!