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Good Morning!
A ‘Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market’ is coming soon to Ventura at the corner of Telegraph & Day Road (next to Ventura College .) They donate $1,000 to a charity everytime they locate in a community. This is a great opportunity for BGCV with your help to quickly add a small increase to our bottom line.
(1) Please go to their website, ‘Fresh & Easy’ Neighborhood Market home page: (2) Click on, ‘Where We Are’; in the upper right corner under ‘Find Your Store’ and type in, Ventura, Ca. 93003 (3) scroll down to ‘Charity Donations” (4) click ‘Find our more” (5) type in their brief requested information including: Ventura; ‘Boys & Girls Club of Ventura; 805-641-5585; Diane Koranda; (new admin address: 6020 Nicoll St., Suite “D”, Ventura, Ca. 93003) www.bgclubventura.org; dianek@bgclubventura.org –
(6) Fill out a short info request, eg: The 5 sites of the Boys & Girls Club of Ventura provide safe, positive, affordable, non-discriminatory, academically centered year-round, after-school and summertime programs with a membership cost of only $20-$25 per year. (No child is ever turned away because of their inability to pay the dues.) We are unique in the community because we are the only youth-centered organization that provides dedicated youth facilities with daily access to programs, led by trained professional program staff with a focus on “at risk” and disadvantaged youth in the Ventura , Oak View and Saticoy communities. Our mission states…”We provide a positive place for all youth and quality programs to help them become healthy, responsible, confident and productive members of our community.” We focus on changing the lives of the community’s youth through: academic achievement; good character & leadership and healthy lifestyles. Yearly we serve over 6500 kids and families in our facilities.” This is merely an overview that can be abbreviated (the maximum words are 150).
Thanks to each of you for all you do for the kids. You are each appreciated!
Nancy G-K
Brief report from your team in Nicaragua: We have visited several of RCVE projects, including the English Language School, the Preschool, The Computer School, The Community Bldg construction site, the micro-credit participants and we attended the meeting of the Granada Rotary Club.
Students from the language school and the computer school have been scheduled time with us one-on-one here in Casa Crozier. We sit with them for an hour or so, forcing them to converse with us in English, helping them find a word or expression that they don’t know. There are several levels of competency and we have to tailor our interaction to their individual levels of fluency. With a few of them, it’s like pulling teeth to get them to talk; with others we have to cut them off.
We have met the young man who was accidentally shot and we donated some money to make his treatment and physical therapy possible. He is making progress.
In the community of Pantanal, most of us went to the Community Council meeting and participated in some decision making and walked to where women have borrowed $25 or $50 and from that small infusion they have multiplied it into clothing making, tamale making and candy making enterprises. People with little hope of improving their situations, now have the wherewithal to earn some income and improve their lot. The money they borrowed has all been repaid with 5% interest and the funds are available now for the next budding entrepreneurs to step forward. They are excited about the opportunity and the changes that this small donation from us has made in their lives.
The children at the preschool presented a program to us, singing songs, reciting poems. We gave them a two-table top gift of education materials – crayons, pens, paper, puzzles, books, educational games, etc. They were thrilled.
We have visited other potential opportunities for us to share our good fortune with these people who have so much less than we can imagine without actually walking the streets of their community. It is a moving and thrilling experience to come down here and experience an international project ourselves. In between the work we’ve been doing, we’ve done some sightseeing and some shopping and we’ve had some good meals in some fine restaurants.
Last December, Husam had the opportunity to visit Cuba along with 20 other individuals from across the US with Bill Hendricks, a teacher at Ventura College. Mr. Hendricks under the disguise of a religious and photography tour is able each year to take a few select individuals to the communist island annually. You may recall that Bob and Wendy Pazen visited over a year ago as well. In less than a one hour flight from Miami, Husam arrived in Cuba to a virtual time warp into the 1950’s, where the population still drive vehicles from the 1950’s from when Fidel took office.
Most of the building’s architecture appear to belong in the streets of Italy or Spain not Cuba. Many older homes have been converted to hotels, in which the local Cuban’s welcome tourists and American’s alike into their homes for home cooked Cuban meals. The locals fluently speak English and have college educations that include extensive post graduate internships. Cubans appear to enjoy attending theatre’s, museums and local restaurants and bars for music. Arts are highly appreciated and thus artists are highly compensated. Artists in fact, are one of the highest compensated careers in Cuba. It is not uncommon for a Cuban to have multiple homes in the States.
Contrary to a typical communist political environment, the Cuban’s welcome many different religions into their culture such as the Catholic, Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths. In fact, Castro allows those of the Jewish faith a more substantial ration of chicken and fish given their dietary restrictions. Also of note is the large Mason population. There are over 65,000 Mason’s in Cuba.
Signs of communism are obviously still apparent, such as the governmental control over which television shows are aired, billboards that are only allowed to depict the “good” quality of life of living in Cuba, and the inability to own your own home. Husam said there is most definitely two economies in Cuba, that of the locals and that of the visitors. A particular good or service may cost 0.70 cents for a Cuban, but for a visitor the same good may cost $15.00, negotiating gets you no where. Most all goods and services are still bartered. Other signs of communism include the local neighborhood watches, that keep on record individual files that document what truths, lies and gossip you may have spoken. You might ask, in such a society how do you motivate yourself to strive for advancement and prosperity? Husam believes the Cuban’s are driven by love not money.
Though many people assume that Cuba is neither safe nor welcomes Americans, Husam discovered that is quite the contrary. Police were visible at every location and kept the beggars and not to mention prostitutes from bothering any tourists. There have been discussions for many years that speculates upon Fidel’s death, will Cuba and the US development an amicable relationship and further allow entry and exit into the country more freely?
Best Regards,
Nikki Sloan
Karl Keller brought today’s program on “Social Networking for Fun and Profit.”
What’s this about Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn? Karl began with a review – the Internet is just 40 years old, and has 1.7 billion users. Every day, people look at 30 billion web pages on the Internet.
Social networking is beginning to take over from email volume. Twitter and Facebook are giving us something new. We’re in a profound change in the way we communicate. Karls’ advice for using these tools: be careful what you say and how you say it, and check it over before you send. Finally, watch out for that “send all” button.
Facebook has about 350 million users and the average user spends 55 minutes per day on it. Twitter has about 18 million users, spending on average 19 minutes per day on it. About 60% of new Twitter users quit within the first month. LinkedIn is business oriented and has about 50 million users. Each of these sites is similar, but generally used for different purposes. Twitter is a “real time” posting of short messages (140 characters max). This type of social networking is, or can be, two-way.
One-way communications include Blogs (short for web-logs), which are one person’s self-published writings on any subject. Youtube is an Internet site where videos can be found on almost anything, including just-for-fun as well as business purposes. Wikipedia is a free on-line encyclopedia where anyone can contribute. For this reason, it’s “reader beware” although Karl says the information is mostly reliable. Podcasts are typically from radio stations or other broadcasters, where interviews can be downloaded to your computer or iPod.
Karl also mentioned Google, whose last quarter’s revenue was $5.9 billion, mostly coming from a share of the advertising revenues. These are all potentials for marketing, from the “finding” stage, to turn people into prospects, then into customers, and then to keep the customers. For those who may want to set up a social networking site, we were advised this is a recipient driven network. The listener can shut you off and nobody will know. Keep your material interesting, relevant and compelling to the listener.
Thank you, Karl, for informing us about this huge and growing social networking phenomenon.
== Rocky
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