My Part in Creating TravelTelevison.org: Elyse

A wise man once said, "Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something." In the first week of my sophomore year in high school, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the American Gulf Coast, destroying large portions of the region and submerging the city of New Orleans. I followed the path of this deadly storm via several news sources. The summer before my senior year, I continued to follow Katrina's path by interning for TravelTelevision.org. During this internship, I helped tell the story of Hurricane Katrina through new eyes: those of the volunteers.

As the Head Writer on this project, I helped promote www.ProjectKatrinaVolunteers.net, a website on which individuals or groups who have traveled to the Gulf Coast during the last two years can share their stories. Since the hurricane, over 500,000 volunteers have traveled to the devastated region to spend their vacation time assisting the rebuilding efforts. Sadly, the volunteer efforts in the Gulf Coast are diminishing, despite the fact that volunteers are still needed for another five to ten years.

Working on the Katrina Project was very meaningful to me because it allowed me to work for an important cause and bring to light the stories of important people who had been otherwise unnoticed in the recovery process of Hurricane Katrina. I enjoyed utilizing my writing skills and acquainting myself with several different styles of writing, such as press releases and blog entries. It is very gratifying to make an impact in solving a world problem. I hope this project will inspire others to volunteer their time to help others in their immediate and global communities, just as it has inspired me.

Elyse

My part in creating TravelTelevision.org: Alex

This summer I had the opportunity to work for a volunteer group, TravelTelevision.org. For this project, I helped locate sites to send press releases to as well as look for potential designs for the site. For the first part, I initially looked at college newspapers. The goal of this was to send the message to college students, who are one of the groups most likely to volunteer. After that I searched for press release sites and media contact lists. Some press release sites I found were http://www.prleap.com/, http://www.pr.com/, http://www.free-press-release.com/, and http://www.openpr.com/. A media contact list I found was at http://www.fair.org and included the email addresses for many news organizations. After this part of the project we searched for website templates to model the site after. I found some interesting designs at http://www.templateyes.com.To build the site, four of us worked with a mentor to create the various components of the site. On August 29, we were able to go to the TV studio and see the premiere of Travel Television. The experience was very fun and interesting and I am very glad I joined in.

Alex

My Part in Creating TravelTelevison.org: Roxana

Hello!

I am one of the students from Churchill who helped create
TravelTelevison.org. I specifically worked on the Blogs portion. I searched for websites that were about Hurricane Katrina and spoke of the volunteers. I found that CommonGroundRelief.org and HandsonGulfCoast.org would be the best to try and link with for ProjectKatrinaVolunteers.com. I also helped set up the blog account on Blogger.com (KatrinaVolunteers.blogspot.com). The process did not take long at all. We looked at various Blog Hosting sites and found that BlogSpot is one of the best. All we did was enter our e-mail, choose a password and user name, then a URL name for the site; that's all it took - and the best part is that it's ready when you are. The main reason we thought that a blog account would be appropriate is one: many people use blogs to communicate with others and comment on issues they believe in; two: it's efficient and what you say can be out on the web in less than one minute. At KatrinaVolunteers.blogspot.com, those who are volunteering and we who helped set up the site, can blog about our experiences and share anything that can be done to help in the Gulf Coast. I learned a lot from this experience and I will continue to help with the websites. I hope those who have visited our sites and have seen the videos also learned that there is a lot that still needs to be done in the Gulf Coast.

Thanks for Your Support,

Roxana