If you could make a difference would you?

[ghostman11]

Hi Guy's,
I am dictating this not writing it!! My arm is ok but still a bit uncomfortable to type with.
So this is the question,
If given the opportunity, how far would you go to make a difference to youngsters who have limited choices? There is a couple of small Schools near where I live (primary Schools), they dont have large numbers of pupils and there funding is tiny. The main work here is farming (kind of) and not much else. Both Schools have very good parent councils, they raise money for books and repairs and keep these two tiny Schools running.
They had a 'Scottish' night for Burns night. It was spectacular! the kids all did something and everyone joined in. Not so Long ago they were given a community grant from somewhere or other, the community decided to give it to the slightly larger School (80 kids). The kids wanted a couple of solar panels and wind turbine.
The education authority got wind of it and took over, they ended up with very little of anything! most the money blown on legal issues etc and generally local authority ineptitude. My daughter goes to one of the School's, and I have been talking to there Headteacher, he is aware I am i involved in a commercial green project (being a small place everyone knows!!!).
I wanted to do something for the Schools but all my cash is well and truly tied up in this venture. So what I came up with is the following,
I have donated 3 acres of land (2.7 acres to be exact), for an ecology center for them, because even a trip to a zoo or botanical garden is 100 mile round trip, therefore expensive for the School to do.
The idea is to get a Log cabin type structure built, a kind of lab/classroom. and use the land for experiments, like planting different things and seeing what it attracts etc etc etc, wild life ponds and a pathway through 3/4 of our woodland.
I have contacted companies and had pledges for things like a couple of IP camera's, but I also want to add some stuff to the actual school classroom's, things like a couple of microscopes, some bug farms, bird tables etc etc.
Also as they are into eco stuff and that kind of thing, the head and I want to introduce some electronics for them, simple stuff.. Things like joule thief circuits, get them to make wind turbines in miniature, that kind of thing. Alot of this we can scavenge.
But there are some things we need, for example as yet we dont have multi meters.
So what I am asking is the following.

Does anyone have any old equipment they would be willing to donate? anything would be good. Components or anything.
LEDS ,small motors,magnet wire,toroid s. are top of the list!

I also need someone to help put some 'easy' lessons together. Fun and interesting, so technical help needed, any and all help greatly appreciated. Officially this appeal cant start until next tuesday, so see this as a thinking time .


Whats in it for you, we are building a webpage with the camera feeds etc, and also a contributor page, a kind of friends of [insert school name] page where we will list the people who have helped. For bigger help there is other things like plaques on equipment saying donated by etc, basically we will make sure you are thanked and appreciated in any way we can.

So anyone willing to help approx 130 young kids get a ecology center and science lab in a School of the ground?
The equipment for digging ponds etc is being loaned by some local firms.
Thoughts and suggestions. I am going back to the sofa now so I will hand the laptop back over to LG

 

[large_ghostman]

I must take credit for the idea , it stems from my School project and assembly, which stems from dads new venture. AHH actualy then he takes the credit or my School does. hmm ok, it wasnt exactly my idea but I have given a multi meter (which was dads )

 

[4pyros]

That's a wonderful idea, however thought of it.
I have tonnes of stuff laying around, but how to get there.
Do you guys have Boy Scouts where you are.
Glade your arm is doing better.

 

[large_ghostman]

GM11 via LG

Boy scouts!! yeah but not near here! The school parents council needs to give approval for the donation of the land we made, its just a formality thing, after that we are official, this will happen monday night.
We are starting a separate group involving people from both Schools to run it. Its science and ecology based, I have managed to get a fair few pledges for biology stuff via my connections. What I lack is connections on the electronics/physics side.
The green house etc they want fully monitored via the classroom, and all kinds of tech stuff like cam links (this is the kids that want it), its a in School thing (they will have science lessons) which is kind of a first at primary level in the uk! Well a first at this Level.
The whole project is very very long and involved, once we are official monday night, I will post full details. Its a huge huge project, but I think well worth it. I will also get LG to take some shots of the land and some plans of what we want to do. Shipping stuff over is something I might be able to work on, I do have a contact in DHL who might do me a favor or two

 

[cowboybob]

Count me in! Will be very interested in seeing the details and how I might be able to help.

 

[tcmtech]

To bad you weren't closer I would happily donate some backhoe and dozer work to help clean the place up and get a spot ready for an actual classroom structure.


Any chance you could get a international Paypal or similar donations account set up so that those of us who would be willing to toss some cash your way would have a way of doing it? $5 - $20 a person may not be much but you get 20 - 100 people to chip in and you have some basic working cash!

 

[CapeCAD]

www.gofundme.com would be a good place to get donations

 

[large_ghostman]

GM111
Thanks guy's thats a great idea!!!
I will get a web page set up and with permission will run a update thread here as well. I would very much like to have a two way thing. So what I plan on doing is set up a site that has all the cams on, some will be inside bird nest box etc etc etc, a couple of underwater cams as well for the ponds and some set up on the experiments the kids do (i will detail a few in a min).
The idea is that everyone that helps in whatever way, be it a actual donation of some description or help with technical details/classroom lesson plans, will get the password. This will give you a complete window into the world of what your helping to make happen. Also as I said before we also want to do tangible things for people, For example we will give out a list of 'gifts', these will be in bands, so anyone that gives time,money,help,parts etc, picks a gift from that band.
LG donated a DMM and chose to have an inscription on the back, a friend in the village made a couple of really nice benches to go in the 'Bee' garden and he is having a brass plaque on them, someone else wants one the T shirts we are printing, these are plain shirts designed and printed by the kids.
These are not for sale but the kids will give them out to 'Friends'. When we discussed things with the head and local authority, it was suggested that as we were donating the land that the center was named after us, we have declined this for personal reason's.
The other project that is being done here is much bigger, and is a in the future thing, we have some huge stone and slate outbuildings, they would be worth a fortune converted into holiday flats. But instead my wife want to take part of the two storey building, and convert it into a holiday home for children with life limiting illness, the idea is they get a free holiday in nice surroundings with plenty to do. This will take time, we are going through the planning stage to get permission to convert the building, later I will try and post some pics of what I am talking about, the eco center is also on the same site but further down the drive.
So in case people are asking why??
A few years ago I lost my father, he was my greatest friend and a man loved by everyone who met him. My wife lost her mother a few years ago and her father last year, we sold the farm and moved. Many people have shown us kindness in many forms over the last few years, for example those of you on here who helped my family when I had my stroke!
These things dont leave you, so when we moved we decided that we wanted to do something tangible, that would say thank you to everyone who has shown us kindness and helped us through some rough times.
We had many idea's but none seemed right. So in the end we decided to do something broader, and try and do a little good.
The land we have donated as you will see later, is pretty rough but ideal for a eco project, it sits at the end of our driveway, a heard of deer use it and alot of wildlife, its also opposite the woodland we own. So we thought we have two choices, leave it for the wildlife as it is, or use it as a kids garden.
We through idea's around and in the end realized that actually if you need three weeks to decide what to do with 3 acres, then you can probably do without the land! So we decided to use it to help teach children and be a place that inspires and gives knowledge and fun. Now I should point out what we mean by donate, our house and land is actually 16 small parcels, each is on its own deed. The triangle as we call the 3 acre patch, is on its own deed. So for legal reason's and to avoid the Schools paying tax, we cant actually sign over the deed. So instead what we have done/are doing is having a covenant written into the deed that restricts the usage of it, tis declares that the land is to be used as a science/eco center for local children (we couldnt say Schools, again because of legal stuff), but it means that the land can now only be used for this project, that will protect it in the future. Because of how the law works we then have to issue a lease to the School's and charge a rent.
So we are granting a 100 year lease for £1 and charging £1 a year rent (legal minimum), we have however donated £200 to the fund so the lease and rent is payed for the next 100 years .
Although its aimed at the two primary Schools, within 100 mile radius there are a few other Schools, these will be allowed to visit and use the center etc for a small fee (60p per child £1 per adult), the fee just goes into the funds pot for the center, it helps pay the costs of running it.
Being a Science and eco center we are looking at ways to heat and light it using renewable sources, this helps keep running costs down, and is a great way to get the kids to experiment with things, for example they will build and design different types of solar heaters etc, Build there own wind turbines, from parts taken out of old discarded washing machines etc.
The idea isnt to teach them how to build the worlds cheapest/ most efficient energy source, but in a way what we want to try and do is get them to stop and think. We are a throw away society, something breaks we throw it away, what we want to do is show them that "Rubbish" can infact be useful, so instead of throwing things in the bin stop and think " what could I do with this".
Sorry this is so long but I want to try and give you a overview of the project.
For example Both Schools have dead battery bins, they collect old batteries and these are then sold to a company who I guess recycle them. Before what would happen is people collect there dead batteries and pop them in one the collecting bins at the Schools, once full these get collected and the School gets a small amount of money for them.
Whats changed is the children now sort the batteries, and they use them in joule thief torches etc, most the batteries that get put in the bin actually read around 1.1V on average for AA and around 8.6V for a pp9, so they are far from dead!!
They are finding ways to use this power, then once they cant squeeze anymore out (so far around 250mV is left) they are then put in the collection bin, and sent off for recycling.
Now we want to take things much further, The Schools are given a budget each year for electric and heating, they have a deal with the council that they can keep any of money left over from the budgets. This is a great incentive to try and save costs, so what we want to try and do is see if we can use dead batteries to light a classroom!
We now collect alot of energy saving bulbs, what we found is many of the dead ones are actually ok, what has gone in them is the electric circuit not the actual bulb, so we are trying to find ways of building different booster circuits from scavenged parts, these will then be used to light the bulbs, ok its alot of work it may not seem worth it, but the kids love spending a couple f hours after school each week building this stuff and using it.
There are many other things that slowly are being put into a pdf that I will post. To save a little money this year, they modified a bike to generate some electric to power the Christmas tree lights! Kids cam in to School 10 mins early each day and took turns to peddle the bike to charge the car battery, it also became a fun thing at break times to see who could generate the most!!
But stop and think about what was actually going on. Not only were they learning how to build a contraption, generate free electric, save a couple of £ on electric, but also they were getting exercise! an doing it for fun.
We have many many plans to eek the last few £ from every aspect of the project.
A big one is our recycle program, the local authority isnt happy about this one, our local authority collect old washing machines etc from people houses free of charge, this got me thinking why?? why do they do it free? So I asked them, they said it was to offer a service to people who cant get there rubbish to the recycle center, and to prevent fly tipping.
Ok sounds reasonable? well yes sounds reasonable, but I wasnt convinced, so I sent what we call in the uk a freedom of information request, this is basically a form you fill in asking a question, the local authority or government body then has a set time to give you the data requested, Unless its top secret they have to give it to you. So i sent one asking for the figures relating to money made from scrap and the recycle centers they have. they make over £400,000 every year from peoples waste! it costs them £41,000 to run the scheme. So its a make money scheme not a service!!
So we are launching our own, a few of us with trailers are offering to pick up old TV's and fridges and cookers and washing machines etc, we will then take the parts we want to harvest, like a few motors etc for the kids to use, and the rest we will sell on as scrap, again all funds to the project. We are also going to get the kids to take ram chips etc from the old pc's we collect, and sell them on ebay, we will use the PSU's and other bits, broken HDD's we will take apart and use some bits, good ones we will sell.
Also we are setting up affiliate accounts with Amazon etc, so when people use Amazon to buy stuff we ask that they go through our ink, it dosnt cost you anymore but they will get a small commission from it.
Anyway this is a small list of what is happening/going to happen.


BUT WAIT!!!!!



Ok a couple of tiny rural Schools on the other side of the world are going to do well out of this, isnt that a bit greedy???

Well yeah it is, so the plan is, yes we will try and make as much money for the Schools as we can, but what about any cash left over?? will it just sit in the account?? NOPE, what we would really like to do is go VIRAL with this. The big picture if you like, is to generate enough "profit" that we can SEED other school's! we want to reach a point where we can make and sell classroom packs for other Schools, but also donate funds or equipment to other primary School's that want to follow our program, So for example. Say we had £20k in the bank, and a School came to us from 300 miles away and said, we like your project, we would love to do the same. Then we would look at the area and see which parts of our project would fit there School, it could be that there was a small patch of land available across the road from them, or they needed a trailer to start a rubbish recycle scheme, or a classroom starter pack. As long as they agreed to follow our route plan (this protects the money and makes sure it isnt wasted on something stupid), then we would give them some money to get it started.
Now this isnt the whole plan, there is alot that until tuesday morning I cant say. But its big and hopefully will stretch alot further than two rural Schools.


NOW THE IMPORTANT BIT

How do we stop local authorities getting hold of it,taking it over and screwing it up? Simple we are going to form a company/society, not a charity because of legal and tax reason's. This 'body' will oversee and run and the whole project, all assets will be linked to it. It will have a kind of board of trustee's, but it wont be a trust because in the uk every 10 years a trust has to pay capital gains tax on its assets.
So it will be a company that technically not make profits (hence seeding other School's), the board will have non executive director's (they dont hold shares), the directors are unpaid. Each School will have its head teacher on the board, Large donator's will have a seat, the size of donation determines the lengh of seat, other directors serve one year each. There will be 2 parents from each School that hold a seat, there will be 4 special seats that are life long. Now yes I will have one! Why? well because the land and the holiday building sits on my land near my house, I want a say in what takes place there, also to be blunt, I have donated £20,000 of land and a building for the terminally ill children that will be worth over £90,000, so I think a non shareholding seat on the board of directors is fair.
So who owns the shares?
This is what I think is the clever bit.
Each School will start a LTD company, this will be run by the CHILDREN, the board of each company will have children as directors (actually because of age there is an adult but its a kind of proxy share thing), the children from each School vote each year for there board. Now this is a bit complicated so bare with me.
Each sub company of children decides what there company will do, for example our two local ones, might decide that they will put aside a couple of small plots to grow plants to sell, they plant the seeds, look after them, sell them. They then give 10% profit to the main comapany and the rest they keep, this money is then used in any way the children decide, within a framework, for example say they grow plants or sell torches on ebay or whatever and make £4000 in a year, if they want to buy a play ground for there School they can, if they want to buy laptops for there classrooms they can, if they decide to grow vegetables and give them to struggling low income households they can, if they want to fund a £1000 trip from here to the cornish ecology dome thing, they can (its educational). If they want to buy 10 play stations for the School they CANT!!
So basically the main company will be set up to make money, this money will be used to seed other schemes in other school's, each School has a sub company that the children run, they use the facilities to make some money, for example set up a waste vegy oil collection point and make and sell bio diesel, a % of the company profit comes back to the parent company (so we can keep growing and seeding), Each of the sub companies will have shares in the main company and each School will have its head teacher sitting on the main companies board. So kids get o learn about Science,ecology,recycling and commerce! infact all the things they should be taught but because of red tape and local authority screw ups, dont get taught! We are trying to take our childrens education to a better level.
There will also be seats available to buy, no idea yet how much, but for some donations it would seem only fair that the person gets given a seat and a vote/say in how things develop, this will probably be for a fixed term.
Anyway this is some more information, I will of course kep posting with further details as and when I get the time, for access to the member area of our site, we are going to set a low level fee, probably around £1 a year, all donators of plants equipment or whatever will get membership, this area of the site will have the cams etc and all kinds of other stuff still to be decided.
For those that dont want to buy a directorship but give a sizeable donation cash/or equipment etc.
You will get membership to a special area, this area allows you to have a vote and a say in how the company is run.
Being a legal LTD company also means ALL accounts will be made visible to all members (from £1 up), or infact to anyone that wants to pay the fee for companies house to give them the records.
EVERYTHING will be completely transparent, this will be written into the company papers, NO ONE will make ANY money out of it!! NO one will get paid, the people who use there cars/truck to pick up stuff for recycling, wont get cash but because fuel costs so much, what we will do is give them some vouchers for our bio diesel! so if they drive 20 miles and it uses 5 litres of diesel they will get a 5 litre voucher for our bio diesel.
what do we need right now???

Well I need someone to help set up, the website. I have a shared hosting account ready, as yet we dont have a domain name, I am using one of mine for now, the reason is until we get the go ahead on monday we dont actually have a name!!!
Anyway all comments and suggestions welcome, dont forget it isnt just money we need or physical goods, if you can come up with experiments for kids aged 5-11 years old, or can do some lesson plans or give technical help, then that is just as helpful as cash! so if you want to help but have no money, you can still be a member and help. We will not exclude anyone, The membership fee of £1 dosnt have to be in cash!!
Also needed are contacts inside companies, that we can ask for equipment donations, things as simple as two inch plumbing pipe etc is really helpful, we need thin acrylic sheet. The idea is we want to buy as little as we can, and get as much as possible given to use, or scavenged, that way the cash can be used to spread this scheme.
I am about to do another thread related to this, that I need technical help on.
If you have read this far
THANK YOU

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

LG - speak to your English teacher about spacing and punctuation!

BTW, I didn't read 'that far' - the 'style' of the post makes it VERY difficult to read.

 

[tcmtech]

Weren't you guys moving just a few months ago? What happened to that?

 

[large_ghostman]

GM11

Yes I need punctuation etc!! I am working on it. But dad is making me type fast!!!!
Yes we were thinking of moving, but things happened and the family didnt want to move, I was faced with a choice, start a business here again or take a great job in Aus. It would have been a golden job opportunity, I would have been a research Scientist for a large university.
But Friends and family just didnt want to move that far. So after much soul searching I decided I would stay in the uk and start a new business. If I had been single I would have gone in a flash, but in the end I think I have made the right choice.
I will be going out now so LG can have the laptop back!