Redoing the Service Plan

While I signed myself up for the Service program run by school, I also redid my plan for individual work outside of school. I made sure the plan was specific enough that I would follow it so I could credit the service. I also made sure that it was interesting and detailed on what I wanted so that I would continue to want to work with my ideas. This is the plan:

Margaret Watts

CAS Plan

February 19, 2012

The first time I met Ashwini was when she was boarding our dog, Tina, at her boarding house. Ashwini loves dogs and has adopted several strays before, and we bonded over this mutual love for animals. After my family and I moved into our house with Tina we frequently visited Ashwini to hang with the new dogs and so she got a chance to see Tina as well. It was over these return trips that we started discussing the possibility of a CAS project with street dogs and adoption.

I would work with Ashwini individually except that I need an organization that I could work with collaboratively over a long period time commitment, while doing different stuff such as designing a website or creative networking. Working, as an individual volunteer would be a new challenge for me –and also an area of weakness since I have never really done it before- since I generally am not very comfortable contacting groups and interacting with individuals I don’t know personally. I believe a good way to help an organization would be to design and maintain a website for them, since it would be a modern way to advertise the organizations needs, show their mission, work collaboratively with them, and also develop new skills of my own that would help throughout life; obviously, it would be necessary to first see what the organization needs, instead of simply deciding for them. Also, a website would be a good way to possibly advertise street dogs available for adoption or fostering from the organization, which would deal with the ethical issue of overpopulation of dogs roaming the streets and possibly spreading diseases.

To document my progress with the street dog organization I would blog about it weekly in my CAS blog, “Thinking of Tomorrow.” If I do end up creating a website, and if they allowed it, I could have a link to my blog so that a visitor could see the link between my creation, CAS, and my blog.

The first step to the plan, which will be done in the first week, is to contact Ashwini to see which organization she thinks would be most efficient in interaction and would benefit most from the volunteer work. I would then contact the organization she recommended and discuss with them what they would need in terms of volunteer service. If that went smoothly, I could begin the prerequisite research that would contribute towards developing whatever they wanted me to do (if thy had wanted a product like a website or something similar that I had never done before), or begin service work if they wanted me to interact with the animals and get them acclimated to human interaction (or other direct action similar to that).

Activity	Deadline for Completion	Output/Deliverable
Telephone Ashwini for advice re: street animal organizations and my idea of a website linking people to street animal services available.	19 Feb	Blog re: her advice. Additional activities input into plan.
Print notices for street dogs and post at school and at other locations where people congregate (Il Gelato).	21 February	Blog re: effectiveness of this approach to get dogs adopted.
Post notice in school newsletter re: puppies for adoption.	21 February	Blog re: effectiveness of this approach to get dogs adopted.
Meet with at least one street animal organization to ask about needs, discuss my skills and time commitment.	27 Feb	Blog re: needs of organization. Add details and next steps to my plan.
Possibly design informational website where people can find links and resources to help street dogs.	On going	On going blog re: how many people visit the website and the effectiveness of this approach to get street dogs adopted.