A big thanks to all of the volunteers that manned our information booth during this year's Cactus Festival. We even had a volunteer from Japan help out! Otsukaresama! (That's "thanks for the hard work" in Japanese) They did a great job spreading the word on Kids for Kaga! Not only did we have information on the programme, we also had a lot of students stop by and have their pictures taken while dressed in our "samurai armour" and yukata. Hope everyone had a great time!
Wow! Lots of ideas during tonight's meeting! The committee is currently focused on building awareness and starting to recruit for duture visits/ host families. Topics included amalgamation of our on-line presence, revamping our promotional materials, starting a Japanese movie series, an art contest and revitalizing Kaga Park in Dundas (who knew we even had Kaga park?!).
Next meeting June 18th! We now have the next meeting date! It will be this upcoming Monday, April 23, 2012 at 7:30pm. The venue is the community room at Cattell Eaton and Chamber Funeral Home (53 Main St, Dundas). Hope everyone can make it!
Hello again! We started off our meeting by discussing the current situation in Japan. Thankfully, Kaga is on the Southwestern side of Japan and not the Northeastern, so there haven't been any major effects seen in Kaga. We also talked about the possible effects the situation could have on students who might be considering joining the exchange. We decided to continue planning for now.
Next, we turned to planning for our trip! We've been looking at changes we could make to make the exchange more affordable and also have students take a more active role in the planning. Our topics seemed to center around our stop in Kyoto; places to go, places to stay. We also decided to look into which summer festivals (a must for any visit!) we could attend during our stay and maybe starting a Kids for Kaga run Facebook page. The recent events in Japan have been heartbreaking to watch. Our hopes and prayers go to those effected by this tragedy.
Fortunately, our sister city of Kaga is located in the Southwestern region of Japan, well away from the affected areas (in the North-east). They may have felt some of the stronger tremors, but luckily they are fine. A lot of great discussion at last night's meeting. We talked a little bit more about possibilities on promoting the programme, a hanami event in May, flags in front of Dundas Town Hall and new students that have expressed an interest in joining the programme. We also went into more details about the itinerary for this year's exchange. This included changes we could make to help decrease the costs of the exchange. Another issue raised (inspired by the initiative shown by one of our current participants) was to have the students become more invested in the trip by being more involved in the planning of their itineraries.
Our next meeting date has been changed from February 28th to March 7th at 7:45pm. Looking forward to seeing everyone!
The group met up at our (new) usual meeting spot to discuss and plan for this summer's upcoming exchange. We had some great ideas to promote the programme in the community, not only to spread the word to possible participants for the August exchange, but also to raise awareness about the programme in the community. Some ideas that were brought up were:
- new posters and pamphlets - contacting schools - programmes at the library - using on-line social media - hanami (cherry blossom viewing) party...when it gets warmer We also answered some questions about the programme, which are now posted in the F.A.Q. section of this site. Next meeting, 8pm on |
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