Blog
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In the news: Our first coverage in the Blogosphere
Earlier this week I was interviewed by Dave Fleet, writer of the Fleet Street blog that specialises in PR, Marketing and New Media about social media and how I hope it’ll help LearnAsOne to develop and grow. You can read the interview here.
Thanks for the coverage Dave.
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RunAsOne: Thanks to all the runners and sponsors!
On very little sleep - due to a Rugby World Cup semi-final and 21st birthday celebrations - 5 pairs of runners took part in the inaugural RunAsOne last Sunday morning.
Chris and Wendy (pictured) led the way home closely followed by Nick, Russ, Marion, Chris, Rebecca, myself, Eileen and Geoff. A massive thank you to everyone who ran and to all the sponsors - you can see all the photos from the day on Flickr. To date over £500 has been raised towards the first school in Zambia!
The support around the course and from the Innovation Sports announcer was amazing. Thanks everybody.
We are currently looking into options for a bigger and improved RunAsOne next year. Please feel free to add ideas for themes, venues, timings etc in the comments and we will keep you posted on the plans via this blog.
Thanks again!
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How cool would it be if you could fund your own school?
Well thanks to LearnAsOne you will soon be able to.
LearnAsOne is a new digital charity set up to fund schools and support their running cost throughout the developing world. Phase I of the website is already live: it’s based around this blog which lets you follow the fundraising progress towards the first school in Zambia, keep on top of all the latest news and interact with other members of the LearnAsOne community.
Phase II - MySchool
But the big idea behind LearnAsOne is to further develop the website to provide an extremely cost-effective way for you to give directly to an overseas community in need of a school. The way it works is very simple: every school will have its own webpage - or blog - that will look a bit like the line drawing below, right (click on the image to see it full size).
The page features the following:
- Two fundraising targets: One for the initial build costs and the other for ongoing support costs (such as books and teachers’ salaries). You will be able to donate to either of these or set up your own fundraising page for an event you are taking part in - more about that later.
- Regular feedback (including videos) direct from the school, so that you can see exactly what your money is helping to achieve.
- The opportunity to leave comments and questions for teachers and pupils to answer.
MyFundraising page
If you do decide to set up a fundraising page you will be able to link it directly to the school you are supporting. (Click on the image to see it full size)
Promote the school with a badge
You will also be able to add a badge or widget to your own website, blog or MySpace page to encourage others to give to your chosen school. (Again, click for the full image)Facebook application
A Facebook application is also in development so that you can add your favourite school or fundraising event to your profile and promote it through your feed.
The beauty of this idea
Once phase II is developed, it will provide everyone with internet access a new, interactive and fun way to support education in the developing world. And what’s really great is that it will cost us virtually the same amount to fundraise for one school as it will for 100! So it will be a highly scalable and a very cost effective way to donate to education in the developing world.
How can I help?
As you can see from the drawings a lot of the thinking has been done. But these drawings still need turning into a web application. To minimise costs we are looking for graphic designers and web developers (xhtml, css, php, MySql) who are interested in volunteering their skills to help develop this functionality. It doesn’t matter if you want to help out for the whole project or just help for a few hours, if you are interested, please get in touch with Steve by emailing volunteer@learnasone.org.
Spread the word
If you like the idea of being able to partially fund your very own school then please, please let other people know about the idea too. Please take the time to digg this post, submit it to StumbleUpon, tag it on delicious, tell your friends, forward it to the press, email bloggers who you think may be interested or post this on Facebook.
And if you have any suggestions for improving the wireframes or turning them into reality, please add your ideas in the comments below. Thank you.
While this functionality is being built fundraising for the first school in Zambia will continue, and updates will be provided on this blog. You can subscribe to the rss feed if you want to stay up-to-date.
Thank you.
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RunAsOne - tie yourself to your mate (or a random) and run 10k so kids in Zambia have the opportunity to go to school
This Sunday, the 14 October 2007, sees the first bit of collective fundraising for LearnAsOne.
5 pairs of runners will haul themselves out of bed, just hours after then end of the Rugby World Cup semi-final and make their way to Clapham Common for a 10k run, with a twist. Each pair will be attached together. Yes, that’s right. Attached together. How? No-one is quite sure. But all will be revealed on Sunday and the evidence will be posted onto this blog and Facebook early next week.
Everyone at LearnAsOne would like to say a massive thank you to the runners and everyone who has been kind enough to dip their hands into their pockets to sponsor them.
If you want to take part, there is still time to sign up. And I’ve even promised that I’ll buy ever runner a thank you drink!
I myself will be running with the rather lovely Rebecca Aspin - and I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t plug our online sponsorship page - www.bmycharity.com/steveandrebecca.
If anyone still has a voice left after the rugby on Saturday night I’m sure the runners would appreciate your support - the start is at an almost civilised 10am and the finish is slap bang in the middle of Clapham Common.
See you all on Sunday!
