Elyse Dalal

I’m so glad that Jason and I are working together because he is a great partner. We are working on getting all the requirements of our project up and he is putting in a lot of work, so I’m really relieved.

I used zeemaps for the afirst time and probabaly last. I never thought I would do something like that, it seems too technical for me. I am happy that I figured it out. Zeemaps is really easy to use, it was kind of fun and definitely very straight-forward.

This group project is very stressful! My group has not even been able to connect at all. Jason and I are texting and emailing, but we have reached out to our other group members and haven’t had any luck. I created a google groups page to use, and I invited my teammates to join so that we could get together there. I still haven’t heard back from themm though.

I didn’t know there were so many tools available. Most interesting is the googledocs where you can be typing real-time with people.

I think the problem is that people are not very connected to the UMASS BB site, so even though they are probably on the internet regularly, it is just not connecting with their general internet usage until they login to BB.

Technology still doesn’t replace good old-fashinoned team work!!

If I were to start a petition to raise money in crowdfunding for something in my area, I would want to put it toward preventing violence in the area. Maybe funds for groups that help get kids off the streets or something. There was another shooting in Dudley on a bus last week and one of my employee’s kids was traumatized. I think these organizations have it hard because they are fighting something intangible and it often seems to be winning. They can probably use all the help they can get. I think it’s all about education and empowerment.

Crowdfunding for civic projects makes a lot of sense. It is the feeling of community that we are often missing today. The downside, however, is that we are trusting that our neighbors (and ourselves) are self-motivated, inspired and dedicated people. This is probably not likely to be true. We are all so busy and into our own worlds that the neighborhood, community and common good are usually assumed to be taken care of by someone else.
Not only this, but entrusting the money of citizens to better their community depends entirely on what money is to be had in the community. In lower income areas, people will not have the money to put into planting extra trees on their streets. There will be an even larger growing gap between high- and low- income neighborhoods.

Morisy, Michael. (n.d.). New tools let citizens fund city projects – The Boston Globe. BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved March 3, 2013, from http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/11/12/new-tools-let-citizens-fund-city-projects/IlMcUl5hQSydlqW99o609M/story.html

Crowdfunding for civic projects allows us- the citizens- to take the future and wellbeing of our community in our own hands. The types of projects that are funded are ones that are beneficial to our city- planting trees, putting technology in special-needs classrooms, fixing local artwork, placing pools in parts of the city, etc. If you check out citizenvestor.com/projects, you can view all the projects that are getting started in your area or you can start your own. These projects allow people to make decisions about what is important to our neighborhoods so we can actually see them get done and see our money and time go straight into our communities, rather than waiting for the city government to get around to it. As governments get bigger and more powerful, we have less and less say in what goes on in the places that we live. This is a great way to start getting that power back.

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