Staying Busy:)

HCN's Hairston project is coming to a close. We are at the point were we are having the stragglers come to our office to get their computer, instead of having the two hour training program at the middle school. I felt this project went as well as possible considering that there was a high number of students that did not have working phones and did not want to be contacted by me or the school (trust issues maybe....still not sure about that one). Also it was extremely difficult to get the parents to attend and stay for the duration of the training, due to lack of interest or too much going on at home. I have been doing my best to reach out to the students that were left behind, and will continue to make calls during free time, but I can only do so much for them when they are unwilling to communicate with me. Overall we have been able to get out 200 computers to these students so I think thats pretty awesome!

Anyway moving on. We will be being stage 2 of our strategic plan next sat. I hope to use this time to develop the committees we need and flush out the four main goals that we want to focus on for the next 5 years. I will be conducting this retreat with one of our Nonprofit Consultants that do a lot of our grant writing. She has been a great help to me and I think we are going to get a lot accomplished, because as of right now our broad is pretty dead, no one is that active and if things don't start picking up fast we will be in trouble. I think once we have the components set that I mentioned before, it will give the org and its broad more direction and a feeling of ownership which should get things moving. I just recently participated in recruting two more members for our broad, an HR specialst and a VP of a local bank, I am excited to see what they bring to the table. We are also looking for a new president.

I have recently started a new project within HCN. We have developed a contract with the ARC of North Carolina (Association of Retarded Citizens) To place a computer in selected group homes all over central North Carolina. I am coordinating the training, training materials and distribution schedules for this project. These computers will include W2000,open office and educational software that has proven to improve certain skills and prolong the life of people with disabilities. This project will carry on till June.

Of course I am constantly trying to find new outlets for money and computers to be brought into the org. I have started contacting more people about coming to tour the facility, it is so amazing to watch these people with DD (Developmental Disabilities) do the work they do and to tell you the truth they have already taught me a lot about refurbishing computers, I am even thinking of building my own soon:)

Well thats about it for now, take care everyone!