Factual Journal Entry!

The last 4 weeks have been focused mainly on finishing the yearbook because it’s our project that is soon to be concluded. We started off by making sure the pages looked good, adding clip arts to certain pages, adding more photos, getting rid of others and reassuring that all the students and teachers were included. For this, Melanie compared the list of students that Gabi gave her with the list of students that Pictavo creates from the portraits that were added to it. She also made sure that the names were spelled correctly. Then, I went over the staff and teachers list to also check that everyone was included. After this, we were able to complete the yearbook, add the ads from the businesses that purchased one and we finally sent the yearbook to Pictavo. We then started to gather information from the companies that bought an ad to be able to send them the bill. We asked for their legal number, name and email and are just waiting for most of them to email us back with the information. Lastly, we made a google form for the members of our community to be able to purchase a yearbook. We created it two weeks ago and have been announcing it on social media and also in morning meeting so that no one misses the chance to get one. We have gotten many purchases by now, however there has been some complaints and challenges with using this form of payment from the parents and members of the community. Due to this, next time or we recommend the upcoming leaders of the yearbook to try to find another method as this one can get really complicated. We recently had some cases where some parents ordered extra yearbooks by accident so we need to make sure that when sending them the bill, we make sure that only the amount of yearbooks wanted by them is the one that is being sent.
This week, we will continue to sell yearbooks until this Wednesday so that on Thursday we can send La Nación (the printing company) the pdf and the amount of yearbooks that we want. We will also do everything to get the missing information from the ad companies so that we can send them a bill and pay back the school the $300 used to pay Pictavo for their service. Once this is done, we will proceed to pay la Nación for the printing of all the yearbooks and hopefully wait two weeks for them to send them to us! Now, this week and the following, we will be focusing mostly on the Boston project. We already have a good amount of money fundraised but still need more than this. For this reason is that we will be trying to do as many fundraisers as possible in the last 3 weeks of school and hopefully continue on the first trimester of next school year. However, this week we will hopefully be having a movie night on Friday. Today we will be sending the administrators an email asking for permission to do this and hopefully hear from them by today or tomorrow. Once we get the approval, we will be announcing it in morning meeting of Chirripo and Tenorio, in Facebook families of La Paz and in the Wednesday Newsletter. We will buy snacks, pizza and drinks for the participants to buy and provide them with a fun and nice afternoon. We will also be buying different types of teas, snacks and biscuits for our next fundraiser which will be an afternoon tea time for the students, friends and family members.
For the last 3 weeks of school we will be focusing on the fundraisers planned for the Boston Project. We will continue with the afternoon tea time where students and members of the community will be able to attend, have tea, snacks and chit chat with their friends. We will also have small and fun activities during the event and a raffle. For this, we will also need to go to different stores and companies and ask for different donations. Once this is done, we will proceed with our next fundraiser which will be a board game night for the parents of La Paz along with their kids. This will be a fun way for everyone to celebrate the end of this school year and have a fun night with their family and friends in a safe and fun environment. Apart from these fundraisers, we will also be going to Cepia to talk about the logistics of the trip with Lauren. This is something that we haven’t been able to do even though it is extremely important. They don’t have the best communication with us through email, which is why we will be going all the way to their installations to directly talk to her. We will need to find a way to get new girls for the trip because the ones that they chose are very young to be travelling alone. Once we figure this out, we can start getting to know the girls, doing fun activities with them and teach them the basics of english. If we do this, they will feel comfortable with us and prepared to go to another country where their official language is english. We will also talk about the visa and passport process for each one of them and help them as much as possible.
From all of this, we know that during break we have to continue to work on this project. We need to continue to advertise our project, get more donations of possible, continue to plan and do fundraisers and make sure that before October of this year, they have their passports and visas ready. This is a legal process that requires time and effort in order to successfully get them. Lastly, we will need to discuss about the logistics such as host families, activities, itinerary, chaperons and most important who will be going with us from our class. This is also important because we need to find candidates that will help us in making sure everything is under control, that they are responsible and show leadership. We have a lot to do for the next 3 months but if we continue to show determination and responsibility, then I believe we will be able to make this project happen.