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| Project HappyChild has 14 areas | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | click any area to access |
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Project HappyChild NEWS 1st March 2001 [for ongoing updates, see Latest Site News] |
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| Hi there! February has been a month to remember, with all the Surftime problems initially and huge traffic levels all the way through - over 180,000 visits at time of writing, and this on the shortest month of the year! All the publicity has been wonderful for the site, though dealing with everything and catching up the backlog has been something of a challenge.
We're delighted to say that our ISP Force 9/ PlusNet have offered us extra support / services as compensation for the recent problems and have pledged their support for Project HappyChild in the future. |
| FUNDRAISING & RESOURCES: There has been a lot happening here this month - firstly, the Sponsored Events calendar has been updated again, with two new items added, firstly "The Foresters Big Toddle" which is an annual sponsored walk for under 5's. This year's Toddle takes place from 1-21st June and is set to be the biggest ever with over 100,000 children all toddling for Barnardo's. Over 70 Toddles have been set up all over the UK, in a variety of venues from theme parks to parks. If you're not near one of these you can set up your own event, which is what the majority of playgroups do. The Toddle 2000 raised over Ł500,000 for Barnardo's and participants raised approximately Ł134,200 for themselves (playgroups keep Ł25 of every Ł100 raised).
The other new addition to Sponsored Events is the "Coast-to-Coast Corsican Challenge" raising funds for BIBIC - The British Institute for Brain Injured Children, and taking place in September of this year. Also on the Fundraising front, the second chapter of "How to run a Successful Car Wash Fundraiser" has gone on line in the "General Fundraising Ideas" area [this has been delayed from last month due to the Surftime problems etc.]. Our thanks again to Lance Winslow III, founder of The Car Wash Guys, who offered to allow us to serialise his book free on the Project HappyChild site. This acclaimed book has helped people to raise over one million dollars a year for worthy causes. |
| PROJECT HAPPYCHILD DIRECTORY - The Lady Hoare Trust, which has been supporting children with limb disabilities and juvenile arthritis for nearly 40 years, has recently moved and changed contact details. Please see their entry in the Project HappyChild Directory [1057] for new address, telephone number, e-mail address and also a link to their new website. If you have a cached or printed-out version of the Directory, you may wish to update this.
The Project HappyChild Directory covers a wide range of UK-based organizations helping children in different ways, both in the UK and overseas. In recent months we've been approached by other organizations asking to be included in the Directory, and we are planning to expand the total number of organizations featured from 80 - 100, gradually, over the months ahead. The Latest News page will give details whenever pagebuilding goes ahead for any of the additions. |
 We're delighted to say that the Project HappyChild website has been chosen as "Site of the Week" [week commencing 26th February] by "The Centre for Europe's Children" [whose site is described as "the Documentation and Information Centre for the Council of Europe Programme for Children. This Programme was proposed in the Action Plan of the Second Summit of Governments of member states of the Council of Europe calling for better protection of children. In co-operation with UNICEF it promotes the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Europe."] |
 Some unusual educational resources have now been added to the FOCUS area of the site , firstly "Migrating birds know no boundaries", a delightful project using satellite telemetry. In a unique co-operation between Israel, Palestine and Jordan, children follow the migration routes of soaring birds and at the same time make friends in neighbouring countries. This Education project is multi-disciplinary and children learn geography, physics, biology and IT and simultaneously take a big step towards peace. On a linked theme, the National Bird-Feeding Society (Illinois) have some free to print resources for children and classrooms - "Learn about Backyard Birds" - background and guidance for instructors and facilitators as well as working materials and projects for group use. Both these resources are linked from the main FOCUS page. |
| SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES: A new page of "Cheats, Tips and Shortcuts" has now been added to "Andy's Guide to Pokémon", along with more Questions and Answers and items for the Missingno and Mew pages. There's still a lot in the pipeline for this particular area, which remains hugely popular with children from many countries, and more cheats and element groups pages will go up as soon as time allows. It's aimed to clear the backlog before Easter when the Gold and Silver versions are due out in the UK [17th April 2001], at which time we *will* somehow have to fit in the pagebuilding for these new areas.
Balanced against this is the fact that we're still making up lost ground from the Surftime problems and computer crash at the start of this month, also that new pagebuilding on Sol's Guide to Harry Potter and the free-to-print French pages at Freeway has accordingly had to be put back four weeks. The main Project HappyChild site is however more or less up to date now, with only a small amount of pagebuilding / amendments outstanding, so we hope to re-start the schedule for building the supplementary resources on 5th March 2001 [all things being equal, the remaining scheduled 1400 supplementary pages should still be able to be completed by the end of 2001]. |
| ACCELERATED LEARNING - Quite apart from his heavy schedule teaching Accelerated Learning techniques to schools and businesses, and his speaking engagements in the UK and abroad, Michael Tipper was hit by the 'flu a week or so ago, so the March articles aren't written yet, let alone on line. We're hoping to be able to rectify this somewhere during the first half of March - whenever they go on line, you can access them at the Accelerated Learning resource - details will also be added to the Latest News page, as appropriate. |
| SITE UPGRADES - Many of you will have noticed the small graphics bar which has appeared at the top of most site pages this month, and is also included on the pages for Supplementary Resources, wherever possible. This was designed as an aid to new visitors in identifying the many different areas - so many visitors come in via the Search Engines (to any single page out of the 1600+ on line across the site] that a mini-navigation-bar seemed appropriate, when each page first loads, to increase awareness of other areas available. Judging by current traffic levels (over 6000 visits most days, sometimes as high as 8000) this is working well, so we'll probably make this a permanent feature of the site. |
| Well, February may have been a short month but it's been one of the most complex ever experienced here! Productive in that the whole site is more integrated than ever before, but draining in terms of the sheer volume of work to be caught up after the initial debacle. We should be back on course in a few days - with a 9-month solid pagebuilding schedule ahead to finish the supplementary resources by Christmas.
Sunday 4th March will be this website's third birthday. In our first year (year and three days, actually) we received 10,000 visits; in our second year to 4th March 2000 we received approx. 250,000. This last year it will be something in the region of 1.4 million (assuming we reach 1.65 million by 4th March 2001). We'd like to do more than that next year, if it's possible for this sort of growth rate to continue .... Please tell your friends and colleagues about Project HappyChild and link to us!! It's only the help that's been received from all of you out there on the Internet that's made all this possible.
Penny. ****************************************************************** |
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| Project HappyChild News - 1st March 2001 - http://www.happychild.org.uk/nvs/news/2001/03.htm located in Area 6 at Project HappyChild - PO Box 911, Epping CM16 4AA, England.
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