#20 Research - Finding Interviewers 2

Today in class, our lecturer helped us on the interview part which we really cannot find any person for interviewing. We will call them for requesting interview in the class. After found the social entrepreneur corporate website, we and lecturer did the draft to say in phone about the interview request. We did call some of the corporate, but one is nobody pick up and another one is answer very short which seems did not want to keep continue on the conversation. It may because the time is time off work which is around five in evening. So that was why the attitude of the person in the other side of phone is not good at all. Luckily, we found one kind person in EcoKnights who are willing to answer our phone call with good attitudes. She gave her email to us to do email interview.

We gave her few questions in the first email and get well-replied from her. Then we sent back our second email to understand more about the answers she gave. Yet she did not replied anymore.

From the interview experiences I got, I felt that was really bad. I thought the person who doing social entrepreneurship should be kind since they doing something benefits for community. Yet all of them are not so friendly to let the outsiders know more about them and their tasks.

#19 Research - Finding Interviewers 1

We need interview to research on this reuse project whether it works or not. The interview also may give us information on how we collect those wasted items and the responds of audiences about reuse.

So, I started to find the related organisations to request to have interview with them. The both organisations I founded are Persatuan Kitar Semula and Community Recycle for Charity (CRC). Persatuan Kitar Semula is an organisation department which concerned of recycling in Malaysia, while CRC is an organisation which doing charities to those need help with recycling. I have tried to email them, but did not get any replies.

Our lecturer also told me that one of our mates also try to find the CRC for interview, but they reject it. So he asked me to do a casual conversation with them, see whether they willing to interview or not.

So I called the CRC's hotline and talking with the "operator" in a casual way. When I ask whether I can know more about them and their tasks, then the person just passed me an email. Then I emailed the related person with consultation of Mr Michael on "the way I speak" in email about reques for interview. Yet there are no reply at all from them.

I was hard to find kind person to interview. Maybe they are busy for good did or they just do not want to do this kind of free but trouble interview?

#18 Contest Planning

Our group have discussed about the contest elements before. Yet we have not yet decided which to do. So I have presented the contests as below:

1) National Day theme Contest - The participants can collect those reusable materials from us and design products from those items. The DIY items must be related to Malaysia's National Day. The best DIY product will get big prizes from us.

2) Christmas Day theme Contest - The participants can collect those reusable materials from us and design products from those items. The DIY items must be related to Christmas celebration. The best DIY product will get big prizes from us.

The contests above are to attract people to start DIY with their own hands. Those contests are all free to join. Yet beside getting experiences, the participants will also stand a chance to win the big prizes to encourage them to do DIY from reusable materials.

#17 Event Planning

We have discussed about events in this project before. But we did not have a confirm list yet. So I did thought of that:

1) Mother's Day DIY event - The event can be joined by children, parents and families. It is to celebrate the Mother's Day by DIY from reusable materials. The participant groups will DIY on the spot. The winner will get prizes. All the participant groups may have a small gifts too.

2) Halloween event - The participants can design their own Halloween costume at their home with reusable materials first. Then at the Halloween day, they can wear it to the party and celebrate the event. The most creative costume will get the prizes.

3) Earth Day DIY event - The participants can join by individual or group. They need to DIY with something they have already collected. The most creative product's participant will get prizes.

3) Showcase and DIY on the spot - We can hold showcase to show some DIY products made from reusable materials in the mall. Besides, we will served a corner which let people join in to do simple DIY followed the guides given.

The activities above are to attract people come to join DIY and have fun together. Besides, those activities also make to reuse the wasted items well.

#16 Ways to Promote

I have got some ways and ideas to promote this project. We can use the social network to promote our website, events and contests which is agreed by every member. When people feel something is good or interesting, they will definitely share them on their Facebook or Twitter page. Yet, we need to find a source to create the content to share first. We will created our own Facebook and Twitter page to be the main platform to share those information and our website. Besides, we also need to collaborate with other popular pages to spread out our website. When the audiences saw it and feel nice, they will share to others too. This process will keep going forward and forward more.

Besides, we can also promote our events and contests in radio station. It is because nowadays the radio station already have one section which announce the events details on air. It is free to everyone who want to promote their events. The announcement played many times in a day. We can submit our event and contest details to the radio station and let the DJs to help us promote it.

#15 Wireframe & Flow Chart of Website

We have discussed the wireframe and flow chart of the Reuse DIY website together. The website will contains About page which introduce who are us, DIY tips and guides sharing and a community to let everyone discuss and share about it. We did a very well group work on this kind of thinking process. Although it may have some conflicts in between which when our ideas are not same, but was happy that with group work, there will be more efficient thinking come out from it. The flow chart below shows the flow of the website we will developed.

#14 Website

For the website, I have thought something as below:

We developed a website for this reuse project. We introduced ourselves and our missions in the “About Us” page. The site contained step-by-step-guide for DIY with reusable items which categorised in different grouping such as home appliance, fashion, decoration and others type. The audiences can DIY for their own by following the guides published in the site. Besides, they can share their ideas on DIY with reusable things in the online community too. If they have something want to reuse but not sure how to reuse it, they can always posted their questions or problems online. The people and admin of the site will try to help, discuss and solve it. Furthermore, there is a section which the audiences can sell their DIY products designed from reusable items. To make this project more attracted, we will posted the event we planned, which related to DIY with reusable materials, on the site. The events can join by anybody who are interested to and it is free. We also organised DIY contests which the participants need to design products related to the theme and develop from reusable materials. The winners will get prize for their creative works.

From the description above, I realised that website is an important platform to let people know what we are doing, what we provided and what we organised. It gave all the information the audiences needed 24/7. So the audiences can just find they want to know in the website. Besides, for me, the website actually give confidence to the audiences about the project or organisation. It is because when someone found there is a website for the corporate or organisation, they will get more believed into them.

#13 Reuse Project Planning

For the project planning, we will start to build the DIY from reusable materials website first. So that we can promote our mission well with that platform to show people who are we and what we do. After that, we may hold some events to let people come and join the party with us. It is fun if many people DIY in the same time, same place together. The events will promote us what what we actually do and let people know more about us. Then we will hold a showcase in mall. The showcase will showed the DIY products that made from participants of the event. They can view their own products displayed in public. The showcase is to let more people know about the benefits of DIY from reusable materials and what they can gain from the DIY. In the showcase, we will also promoted our upcoming contest in it to hope more people will join. So, we also do hold contest to let more talented people to join in to DIY "trend" which the big prizes may become an attraction to the people. From the contest, we hope that they will found the happiness and satisfaction by doing this DIY from reusable items.

#12 Reuse Ideas Developing

Our group has discuss many ideas on how to work on this reuse project. They thought a lots of ways to DIY reuse. Yet actually my original idea was just focus on one item to reuse. But it was also good that for now, because everybody can have freedom to choose what to use and what to DIY.

We thought of developing a website which contains these DIY ideas and also organised some events and contests which looks interesting. For example, the event can be National Day. We all celebrated this day with DIY-made-decoration. Other member got suggested Mid-Autumn Festival celebration, but I spoke out my opinion which we normally celebrated this festival with our families followed our Chinese tradition. After hearing my opinions, the member also agreed with this fact. So when thinking about the project timeline, we need to pay attention to those big days or holidays in Malaysia to avoid clashing the event or contest days with it.

#11 Reuse Things to DIY

The people now are increasing amount of trashes every year. The environment has been polluted is getting poorer. To reduce the trashes, we can join in to the green activity like reuse. Since we cannot recycle the trashes on our own, and the recycle activity already well-known by Malaysia, so this time we will focus our scope to reuse the wasted materials and DY from it.

From my opinion, we used to created trash in our daily lives. From that trash, can we choose something out and reuse it? The answer is yes. For example, after we read the magazine, we may throw it away, since the recycle lorry out there are more to collect newspaper for recycling instead of magazines. From the magazines, we can do something interesting by our own. The images below will explained it:

We can make Christmas paper tree from the old magazines as decoration to decorate the house or working place.

There are so many crafts we can make from old magazines, such as photo frame, decorations and so on.

We can make gift bows from the old magazine. Actually I did used old magazine paper to wrap the gift also.

The gift bags or paper bags can be made from old magazines too.

The magazine-bowl which we can use to put our keys, coins or other little things. It may need quite a lot efforts or time, but is worth that it come out as an art-bowl.

The magazine-style wallet developed from old magazines. I was impressed by it when I found it on Internet, yet it may need some steps to make the wallet strong enough.

For me who is consider as lazy person, when I looks at the wallet idea, I get impressed by it and felt want to make it once when I free too. So, actually, the DIY products or ideas which are interesting will attracted people to participate in but now only just viewing.