It’s All About the Fundraising!

Since the start of the AIDS Walk Atlanta fund-raising for our English class, I have tried a few of the strategies that my group and me thought up in our Fundraising Plan paper. My first attempt seemed to be the easiest of the strategies so I gave it a try right away. I went around to my friends in my dorm and asked them for small donations: spare change and dollar bills. After this, I decided to try an online strategy. I set up a Facebook group with links to all of my group members web pages asking for donations.

The time management side of the actual fund-raising hasn’t presented that much of a problem. Because the people I have received money from live in my dorm, I simply walked around asking them around six o’clock, the time that most people start getting ready to go to dinner or to a lab class. This makes it easy for them to grab change and go out the door. The online efforts aren’t at all time constraining. It took about ten minutes to make the group, and now I simply check up on the group every once in a while to see if there has been any progress. Our original goal was $700, meaning each group member would be responsible for around $120. We believe this is still feasible, because one group member has already raised over $100.

One of our fund-raising ideas that we have altered was hosting a dinner for a whole dorm. We have learned that we should take an approach that causes us not to spend any money at all. So instead, we have proposed a Pot Luck dinner where anyone who brings a dish doesn’t have to pay, but any other people who plan to eat the food must pay a cover charge of about $5. We decided this would bring in a lot of hungry college students who are sick of dining hall food and miss home cooked food. We hope to print free fliers and sign up sheets from the library, saving even more of our money and resources.

Fundraising for me has always been a kind of awkward activity. I haven’t figured out why yet, but this project has been really easy for me. I have no problem going around and asking people do donate to this cause. It could be because it is for a grade or because I know that the money is going somewhere worthy. Either way, I haven’t faced too many challenges, except getting the word out to non-college students. However, parent’s weekend and football games provide a lot of adults who are willing to help college students who are supporting a worthy cause.

The Role of Women in Film and Television

The film License to Thrive depicts the importance of the Title IX law since its acceptance on June 23, 1972. Title IX’s purpose is to give a more equal opportunity to women in educational environments. Although that was the bills main focus, it has mostly been linked to the increase in women’s athletics. The sports programs have increased exponentially in both lower and higher level educational facilities. Despite the fact that most people put solely women’s athletics and Title IX together, there have been numerous personal and professional programs that help to give young women a better chance at a successful future. These programs work at the advancement of women in the business world, as well as helping young women achieve their dreams.

The Three Prong Test serves as a guideline to make sure that schools are complying with the Title IX objectives. Each school is only obligated to follow one of the three prongs. Two of the prongs are related, again, only to athletics: proportionality and the support and creation of women’s teams. The last prong requires an institution to continue offering and even expanding opportunities to women, such as scholarships. This stipulation has increased academic openings for young women in their given fields of work. These scholarships and programs are supposed to allow equality for men and women. However, this hasn’t been the case in certain programs.

‘Girls in the Directors Chair’ is one of the examples that License to Thrive references. It has recently been implemented to open the film and television field to women. It has also been used to further women’s education in terms of media projects. The program works with two teams of young women. Each group of girls is flown out to LA to learn and work on how to make a movie. The movies for each of the groups is posted on an Internet website. There is a worldwide vote held to decide which group is the winner of the competition.

In the future, I believe that this program will have a greater impact. However at this point, it is no secret that the film and television industry is swarming with white male directors. “Of the 85 or so live action flicks released by the big studios in 2009, 93% were directed by white men,” says a New York Times reporter. This shows that the progress of the Title XI influenced film and television programs have not yet made the impact they are expected to make. While directing is mainly male based, the acting population includes a wide diversity. If that were the point of the ‘Girls in the Directors Chair’ organization then they would have a great success rate.

The program could be made on a wider scale. This would increase its notoriety and would make the competition a bigger learning experience. Adding more groups and pumping up the advertisement for the competition would allow for more influence and serve the purpose of the group. The group would also have the opportunity to reach out to more young women.