Impact25 Progress (4-2)

Sophia Di Vitto and I are working together on our Impact25 project.  We wanted to combine new technology and old technology in our project.  We also thought a lot about what impact would mean for us and what kind of an impact we wanted to make.  We were thinking about all of the political unrest in our country now and we wanted to find a way to give everyone who wanted one a voice in our political system.  Especially at a time when it feels like the angry, fearful and divisive voices are getting all of the attention.  We decided to reach out to friends and family with this e-mail:

Dear _____,

I am working on a project where we have to impact people in a way that spreads a message about something we care about. My project partner and I came up with the idea of sending laser engraved post cards to your local senators and congress people about issues you care about. If you would like to participate in the project, please send us the following information:

1. A drawing you made, or image you would like on the front of the postcard

2. Fill in the blanks of this sentence "I am a voter, and I care about __________, _________, and ___________."

3. The address of your local senator or congressperson.

Find out your senators address at http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/senators_cfm.cfm

Find out your congressperson's address at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Thank you for your time and for getting involved with your political system!

Sincerely, 

Avery Forbes and Sophia Di Vitto

sophia.divitto@gmail.com

avery.forbes@gmail.com 

We would then type the messages up and print them out on printer friendly postcard paper.  The images we would burn onto the front using the laser engraver.  This creates a beautiful toned image that will hopefully make the politician stop and look and think for a moment.  Even if they don't read the text, the image will be powerful enough to get the message across.  The great thing about using new technology for this process is that the project becomes easily scaleable.  If we needed to, we could create hundreds of postcards with minimal effort to really get our messages of peace and equality through to the politicians.  And even if the postcard never gets seen, we at least got our friends thinking about what issues they care about the most, and hopefully they will be affected enough to get to the polls.