project680.org

Ready. Set. Go!!!

Information is now up for the Project 680 Underwear Drive. You can click on “underwear” above to read all the details and send people to www.project680.org/underwear. We are ready to begin this drive and we invite residents throughout the cities of Rancho Cordova and Folsom to get involved (and anyone else too). We welcome local organizations and businesseses too, and we hope to see some creativity, teamwork and a whole lot of love go into this month-long effort. We invite all ages and backgrounds to partner together to advocate for local students in this simple way.

We will be collecting underwear until May 8, 2009 and it is our goal to collect 680 pairs of underwear for local “homeless” students. Let’s do it!!!

Thank you already to the households and organizations that have chosen to be drop-off locations. We are still looking for more locations too. Let us know if you are interested.

A special thank you to a Girl Scout troop in Folsom, Cordova Neighborhood Church, City Hall, Rancho Cordova Neighborhood Center, and all residents who have begun to get involved already.

Here we go.

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A quick announcement to let everyone know that details about the Project 680 Underwear Drive will be coming very shortly. You can expect to have more information within the next week. This is going to be exciting and we are looking for community members of all ages and backgrounds within Rancho Cordova and Folsom to get involved in very basic ways. We can make a big difference when we all combine our simple efforts.

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Thank you again to all who came to the Project 680 Community Forum and to those who wanted to but were not able. I would say it was a definite success. Here are the highlights:

Informative presentation; Great interaction; Decision to do an “underwear drive” to unfold at some point soon when we obtain more information; The idea of a coat drive came up for October; The need for communication and networking was mentioned; Steven volunteered to help develop the blog and website for the sake of helping communication flow; Butch & Bonnie will host a “sorting party” at some point; Others had ideas for how they would like to get involved.

Thank you again to everyone who came. Your time is appreciated. I am sorry to see that our story did not play on the 11pm news. A camera crew from News 10 came out, but apparently we didn’t make the cut. If anyone happens to see them play the story this morning or another time, do let us know (and record it).

News 10 did give us a link from their website though as shown below in the screenshot. The link will likely be up for a few days.

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We now have www.project680.org  At the Project 680 Community Forum tonight, we were in agreement that reserving this domain would be a great move for our efforts. 

Thank you to all who made tonight such a great time. It was great to meet so many people and see such love brewing in our community. We appreciate Charlene and Trish for their stellar presentation. Thank you to  Cordova Neighborhood Church for offering their facility. Thank you to Sheryl of the Soroptimist Organization of Rancho Cordova for going shopping for all the snacks. More on the event later…

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We appreciate The Grapevine Independent for running a memo in their “Upcoming” section on the front page of this week’s paper. Welcome to any Grapevine readers who found their way to this site. 

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When reading through this website or any literature from Project 680, you may encounter the word “simple” quite a bit. This is no accident. This word is used frequently because it is in the core of our philosophy.

We believe that making a difference is about being available to the community in “simple” ways. You don’t need gray hair, experience, education, surplus time, or a certain income level. It’s all about responding to a local problem in ways that make sense for our busy lives and the needs of local students. It’s just a matter of saying, “I’m willing to be a part of the solution”. It’s about teaming up with other residents to get VERY practical about about assisting struggling students.

Mother Theresa has a very poignant quote that serves to fuel some of my philosophy in life. She said, “we can do no great things, only small things with great love.” The point is that more than the grandiose accomplishments we can have in life, the greatest thing we can do is love.

As discussion unfolds in just three days at the Project 680 Community Forum, my hope is that we will truly find “simple” responses to student homelessness and that we will love greatly in 2009.

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If anyone would like to help out with the Project 680 Community Forum next Wednesday, let us know. There are some simple logistics to take care of such as purchasing snacks before the meeting (and getting reimbursed), setting up chairs, and other minor details. Let us know if you’re interested. See the following link for event details: Project 680 Community Forum

The Community Forum will take place on Wednesday, March 11th at 6:30pm at 10600 Coloma Road in Rancho Cordova (thank you to Cordova Neighborhood Church for giving us free meeting space).

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The Project 680 Blog now has a mobile phone view enabled. No matter what gadget you have, wether an iPhone, Google Phone, or something else, you should be able to view blog posts quite easily while out and about. Test it out and let us know if it is working properly.

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If you are on Facebook, we want to invite you to join the Project 680 Facebook Group. This group is available for anyone, but we particularly invite local residents to participate. The benefit of the Facebook Group is that it is one more way to stay informed, connect, and network together for the sake of local students who are deemed homeless.

See you on Facebook.

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This is a test post, but while I’m at it I might as well tell everyone about the Project 680 Community Forum on March 11th at 6:30pm. We will meet at 10600 Coloma Road in Rancho Cordova to hear from the District Liaison for Homeless Services, have a Q&A, and discussion as a community about what it can look like to support local students in simple ways.

Our goal is to discover simple ways to respond to a huge problem in our community – student homelessness. We are blown away that there were 680 documented cases of homeless students within Rancho Cordova & Folsom last year. Can you believe that? 680!!!! So let’s do something together at the grassroots level and find solutions together. This isn’t about creating big programs and time-consuming projects either, but rather about creativity and finding ways to all pitch in.

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