Project Report (Gabrielle Hampton)

8/17/2019 Project Report (Gabrielle Hampton)

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Origins

On February 22, during class, Kris and Darin began to bounce ideas off of each other,

letting the ideas flow to see what would happen. Something Kris and Darin have both expressed

within their personal lives is the importance of taing care of our bodies and minds, especially ascollege students, in whatever form benefits us personally. Darin suggested it, and Kris

immediately built upon that suggestion.

!n the beginning, Kris and Darin had no clue how this idea would be tangible, but after

discussing it amongst the themselves, they created a list of things that they both recogni"ed as

being beneficial for any and everyone#s personal care. $his list included%

• Drining tea, as Darin noticed that almost every day Kris has a cup of tea, and she has

said that it maes her happy, as well as eeps her calm.

• $he use of adult coloring boos and boo lie Wreck This Journal .

• &editation'relaxation

• (istening to calming'peaceful music

$hese are only a few things that Darin and Kris came up with, and they agreed that whatever

their civic engagement pro)ect turned out to be, it should involve some of those different options.

Development

*fter about a wee of brainstorming, Kris and Darin extended opportunities to the rest of the

class to see who else would be interested in their pro)ect. $hey felt this was important for anyone

in the class to participate in and that it should not be limited, because self+care and preservation

is crucial for everyone, especially those involved on college campuses even including faculty,

such as -rofessor (aunier.

/asmine and 0abby )oined the team, and together we all started planning our event. 1e

decided that in order to eep the scope of our event narrow, that we would give out tea and

motivational messages, because those are two things we felt that a multitude of people would

benefit from, rather than trying to give out things that are more of a niche.

1e spent a long time devising a name for our event and our organi"ation, because we wanted

the name to have significance in the 3F community and encompass our main goals and ideas.


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1e ultimately decided on 4re3harge,5 a play on 3F#s motto% 43harge On,5 which also stressed

the importance of taing a moment in one#s day to assess mental and physical wellbeing. 1e

could have easily held our event without a name, but we felt that having a name strengthened the

rhetoric of our message% we are not a disorgani"ed student group, merely holding a small event

for a school pro)ect6 we are a small organi"ation with goals, and the power and idealism to carry

out those goals.

!n order to promote a sense of longevity for our pro)ect, we decided to create and maintain a

newsletter throughout the school year. 1e did not want our event to be a one+time occasion,

because the health of students and faculty is not one+time issue. 1e also believed that students

would receive a newsletter much more than they would any other sort of medium, such as more

fre7uent tabling or meetups, because we all have busy schedules and cannot always attend

physical events. /asmine began to create a newsletter on a free platform called $iny(etter

http%''tinyletter.com, which offers simple and ad+free newsletter distribution. $he newsletter

provides a method to disseminate self+care tips and words of encouragement without re7uiring asocial obligation. $he choice to produce a digital newsletter is expressed in the beginning of our

first issue, sent on *pril 28th.

“By issuing this newsletter biweekly (that is, once every two weeks), we want to brighten the

days, weeks, and semesters of anyone in need. andouts are often thrown away, and lectures

forgotten! but emails carry a digital "ermanence that we believe college students benefit from.

That#s why we are digital! we want you to be able to access our ti"s and encouragements

through any digital medium, and be able to look back, through our archive, of the weeks of love

and care that we "rovide.$

Planning

1hen the planning really got rolling, we were ased to figure out how to measure each

individual#s contributions and how we would determine individual accountability. !t was here

http://tinyletter.com/http://tinyletter.com/


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that everything started to fall together and flow very well. Kris and /asmine agreed to wor

together to research and reach out to some local tea shops and caf9s for possible partner+ and'or

sponsorships. 0abby volunteered to reach out to the different offices on campus and find out

what we would need to do to secure any space on campus. Darin volunteered to eep running

documents of all meetings and discussions that too place, as well as reaching out to the

:ecreation and 1ellness 3enter and later ;ealth and 1ellness Services to as for possible

partnership. *ll of these contributions gave everyone a part to do, and without these

contributions, the pro)ect as a whole would have not been as successful as it has been.

During the planning process, we each have been in contact with several people and offices

around 3F as well as the surrounding community. 1e all came together and used our interests

and networing sills to contribute in ways that none of us could have imagined. Kris served as

our tea 4expert5, as well as spoe to possible speaers when we were originally planning to hold

a bigger event than tabling. 0abby emailed and spoe to many different people on campus,

including staff members and the *ssistant Director of OS!, and her outreach helped us secure a

space. /asmine not only reached out to a local tea place and collected a donation of tea from the

Dandelion 3ommunitea 3af9 http%''dandelioncommunitea.com', but also did most of the

graphics that were involved in our tabling event. Darin ept in close contact with ;ealth and

1ellness Services at 3F, as well as too note of all discussions.


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and positive messages. One of our favorite responses we received was when a man was given a

care pacet and replied with 41ait, why are you doing thisE5 as if he couldn#t believe that we

didn#t have some ulterior motive.

From our proposal to the event itself, we learned and have grown a lot. 1e reached out to

more people than we got responses from, but that is oay. 1e were able to focus a lot on the

rhetoric and impact that our event would have by eeping it on a small scale. 1e were able to

apply a lot of what we learned to this one event. Our bodies hold rhetoric because as college

students, we were able to relate to our target audience in a way that faculty and staff at 3F

cannot. $hat in itself is symbolic, in addition to the fact that we were able to easily identify with

our target audience and created an event where not only did our target audience get to directly

participate, but we were able to as well. 1ith our event, we were able to change some of the

reality of finals% usually, it#s a stressful time and some students cannot handle it, but we were

able to stop over AB students on campus and change how they looed at the day. Our event was

visual and attention+grabbing, which is important on a college campus, and also aided in the

narrative of some of the students we spoe with. Our table was unintentionally placed near

another group doing a similar thing, and some of the students with their organi"ation actually

stopped by our table and congratulated us on our event. !t was small, but still very powerful.

1e measured impact by how many subscribers we ac7uired for our newsletter and by how

many supplies we were able to give out at our event. 1e received 2 subscribers to our

newsletter. *lthough this does not seem lie a large number compared to the amount of people

we taled with, or the amount of students on campus overall, we are pleased with the result. 1e,

as a group, decided early into the planning process that as long as we impacted one person

positively, we succeeded in our tas. 1e created GB care pacages, with tea bags and words of

encouragement and motivation, and gave out every single one. 1hen we were nearly out,

/asmine ran to her dorm to gather any extra tea bags she could find. Overall, we handed out over

AB care pacages, and impacted even more through giving out our motivational cards by

themselves, and )ust by our presence as a positive force on campus.


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Pictures from Developing, Planning, and Setbacks

?elow are many pictures from the start of our efforts to the event itself. $here are some

handwritten notes, some screenshots from our messages to each other, moc+ups of the

motivational cards we produced, as well as Darin#s interaction with Hatalie from ;ealth and

1ellness Services at 3F. $his was the basis of all our wor6 without this, our event would have

not been as successful as it was.


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Pictures from the Event

?elow are pictures from the event itself, including photographs of our table setup, visitors

who attended, and screenshots from our small feature on 3hannel =J HewsC


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Documents

Project Report (Gabrielle Hampton)