Monkeyin' Around

First Mural Musings

After so much focus on fundraising it's nice to take a break and come back to the real point of the project: the mural and penpal letters.

Here's what the mural looks like so far, we finished tracing the artist sketch last night. (Quality suffers because these pictures are taken with a G1)




Expect a video soon of the students painting.

Handout

Hayden has been hard at work creating a handout for donations. It's really starting to look professional, and will definitely add credibility when we search for donations this upcoming week. Here's what the flyer looks like so far!

Funds

CHIMP currently has $200 of the total $500 we need to fund out project. We understand the gravity of our situation, and have been contacting businesses in the Boulder area for most of the week. We have received a lot of interest, but unfortunately have received no monetary donations.

Most businesses offered gift cards, but none offered the capital that we need for out project.

On the bright side, Half Fast Subs in Boulder has offered to provide sub sandwiches for the final day of painting when the artist and a couple members from Project Yes! will be showing up.

CHIMP Needs Your Help!

The Children's Hospital Inspired Mural Project desperately needs your help to impact the children at the Anschutz Medical Campus and Pioneer Elementary. We greatly appreciate anything you can donate to our project, and we assure you that it is all going toward a great cause. You can support our cause by either clicking on the donation link at the top right of this blog, or the link in this post.

Thanks again,
CHIMP

Visit to the Children's Hospital

This has been an incredible week for CHIMP (or at least the members that could come to the Childrens Hospital). Shweta, Alex, Sarah, and I went to the Children's Hospital this past Friday to meet the students.

I know that I can speak for the entire group when I say that it was a life changing experience which reaffirmed our devotion to the project.

We listened to the students wishes for the mural, and we will ensure that every requested object makes it on the painting. We also learned about the childrens' illnesses. It is amazing to hear what some fourth and fifth graders fight against.

We also took the penpal letters that the kids at the Children's Hospital wrote for their penpals in Lafayette.

Delay in Posting

Let me begin be apologizing for the sabbatical. I know it has been a long time since the last post, I've been very busy with CHIMP and other school projects that are demanding my time. However, I do have a significant amount of progress to note:

• We will be working with a group of fourth and fifth graders through Project Yes at Pioneer Elementary to create the mural.
• The mural will be donated to the Anschutz children's hospital in Denver.
• We will be hiring an artist to sketch the mural, which will then be projected onto stretched canvas. The children at the hospital will be more or less painting by number, and the artist will do minimal touch-ups after the project is completed. This step was necessary because the Hospital was extremely concerned about the quality of a mural produced by 4th and 5th graders. The students will still be learning the importance of service and community, but we wanted to avoid creating a big brown blob.

Results

Survey

Sketches

Hayden finished some sketches for the logo of our project. Obviously they are only rough drafts, but they are already starting to look great!

Let Them Eat Cake!

On September 1st blogging turned 10 years old. In belated honor of bloggings 10th anniversary, I thought it would be fitting to post pictures of the cake that Shweta made for our recitation today. I have a huge sweet tooth, and I have to say that her cake was incredible. A strawberry cake with nutella filling, it was absolutely to die for. Of course the blueberry letters that spelled CHIMP on top were the perfect decoration.

That's a picture of Liz getting ready to cut the cake for all of us. I wish I could eat it again!

In more serious news, CHIMP seems to progressing nicely. We now have a draft of the letter that we will send to possible donors. I will be posting that shortly!

Schedule

Because everyone loves deadlines.

Final Contract

With PLC lecture on Tuesday we also needed to finalize our contract for the Children's Hospital Inspired Mural Project.

Here's what our proposal looked like!

Meeting 2: Project CHIMP continues.

There's a lot to report this week in terms of CHIMP, so I'll try to be efficient and not waste too much time :)

First our group has decided on a regular meeting time (Sunday nights at 7) to keep productivity high. It is still unclear if there will be cookies available at the meetings, although I am certainly not opposed.

This week we significantly narrowed the scope of our project, which I believe is healthy. It should make the group more focused on a single, attainable goal. We will be targeting one class of 5th grade students in the Boulder area. Kendyl and Noah will be communicating with local schools to get that sector of the project rolling.

Likewise, we will be taking the one piece of art to the Denver Children's Hospital. Peter will be organizing that equally vital portion of our project.

Meanwhile Liz, Shweta and Hayden will be contacting a variety of venues to fund-raise and plead for donations. I am hesitant to mention the names of any specific stores before we receive any contributions, but several local businesses look promising. Hopefully, contacting the CU Boulder Arts Department will also return large dividends.

Just as the temporary work of our project is divided among the group, so too the overall project is partitioned into discrete roles for team members. Each person volunteered for the job they wanted. That should keep everyone happy.

**Paperwork (The boring, evil part of modern society)
Of course the dark side of any project like this is paperwork. Concerns were brought up about allergies to acrylic paint, which also means an allergy to latex. We're planning on bringing non-latex gloves just in case, but we will probably also need a release of liability form for the students to take to their parents. If we make a video, we will also need forms allowing the children to be in it.

Planning the Project: The Initial Proposal

After our initial proposal for the group community service project was rejected by Sean, we decided to recommence the planning stage. Thankfully, our meeting was very productive. The product of all our work, sweat, and Hayden's blood is a proposal that everyone (or at least those in attendance) can rally behind.

In a nutshell, our project is to help students at local elementary schools paint projects that will later be donated to the children's hospital.

The fist step of our project is fundraising. In many ways this could turn out to be the most difficult part of our project, at least during this economy.

In the meantime we will need to create ties with elementary school administration, to get us into the schools and make this project possible.

Perhaps the best news from our first meeting is that our Project now has a very catchy name. the Children's Hospital Inspired Mural Project, or CHIMP.

About PLC and CHIMP

The best explanation of Presidents Leadership Class (PLC) comes from the website:

The Presidents Leadership Class (PLC) is a four-year leadership development program for top students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It is supported and directed by a unique partnership between the Presidents Leadership Class, Inc. and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

First year PLC sholars enroll in PRLC 1810: Leadership and Ethics, which has lecture every Tuesday night from 7-9PM, and recitation every Thursday from 3:30-5:30. The speakers at lecture are typically leaders in the Boulder and Denver area.

One assignment in the class is to create a unique group community service project. As a result of that assignment, our group created the Children's Hospital Inspired Mural Project (CHIMP). In a nutshell, CHIMP aims to teach 5th grade students about artwork, creativity, and service by empowering them to create a mural project on canvas for the Children's Hospital.