What The Top Charities Make

Charity chart
Article by Liz Goodey

Not exactly what i was looking for and a bit out dated, but it does give me an idea and insight into what charities and in what categories do charities make that most money which will be valuable to me down the road.

A Foundations Gotta Get Paid Too

Interesting
Article by Lillian Downey

I guess you learn something new everyday, i had no idea that only 5% of the money raised by charities go towards actual charity. 95% is used to to keep them running?! 95%, wow, so basically a charity or foundation is a huge company, like any other company, that just decides to donate 5% of their earnings towards charity? It sounds like the only difference between a regular company and a foundation is that a foundations identity is that they give, give and give some more. But then, if you really think about it, it has to be that way because if they couldn't keep themselves running there would be no foundation to donate money to. I wonder how much an average charity makes because 5% could be a lot or very little.

I Fight Like A Girl

Raising Money & Awareness

This article by Nicole Boone describe exactly the feel and intentions i want to create with well designed clothes that promote cause, not to mention they are made by the charity and not something like a Gucci bag with AIDS associations. This is the direction i want to go in.

Charity & Fashion

Charity vs Fashion

This article by John M Pawlak discusses the relationship between fashion and charity and how the high profile and celebrity nature of fashion often tarnishes the credibility of charitable organizations.

This article is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for, it talks about the relationship between fashion and charity and the stereotypes, misconceptions and negative thoughts already associated with the partnership of the two. This is why i propose that instead of fashion companies and charities partnering, charities should put more focus into design t-shirts and other wearable merchandise when the decide to make them because the wearable merchandise can and will open up a huge market in which a charity or charities can accumulate money.

Camp Jamokee

Camp Jamokee

Here is a link to Camp Jamokee, it is an charity that raises money for kids so that the can attend summer camp and participate in all the activities regular kids can, among other things. It may not seem like much, but for people that suffer from Sickle Cell, especially kids would suffer miss out on a lot of thing things that other kids take for granted.

An even better look at someone suffering with SIckle Cell

These are vlog posts from a person suffering from Sickle Cell pain and he is in the hospital describing how life is during the pain. I think it's great how that he is able to show the world a taste of what people with Sickle Cell disease have to go through.

A Better look into the life of someone with Sickle Cell

Explanation & Experience of Sickle Cell

This title is pretty much self explanatory, although to really understand the pain that they go through you need to see it first hand.

Sickle Cell Anemia

For those of you that don't know, Sickle Cell Anemia is a disease that effects the blood cell in the body, as you know normal blood cells are shaped like doughnuts, well blood cells of people with sickle cell anemia are shaped like sickles or half moons, picture a doughnut with a side punched in. Now when you have blood cell that are sickle shape you have a problem, because those oddly-shaped cells tend to get clogged in the blood vessels stopping the blood from reaching the the area that being clogged cause excruciating pain. From this brief explanation I know it's hard to really understand how badly one suffers from this disease, but when you live with someone who has this disease you know all too well. My dad and 4 of his sisters suffer from this disease and it effects their everyday lives, especially when they were younger, when they were kids, they were in and out of the hospital like it was their second home. I can't go into much more detail that at because it's a little too personal.
However, being around this, I've seen enough to know that my dad and his sisters have it good compared to some people, most of them kids. There are some kids today as young as 7 that spend more time in the hospital then at school or even home, some kids have to keep oxygen tanks by their bed just in case. What kind of life is that for a kid to live? the worst part is that not many people know about the disease and until recently not many doctors knew how to treat it.
My Dad and one of my Aunts are now a part of this charity called Camp Jamoke which helps send kids with sickle cell to camp where they can do everything other kids can do and not worry about sickle cell attacks because there are people with the knowledge and things needed to assist them should an attack happen.
I think its a good cause, but i wish there was more that could be done to bring awareness to this disease.
Which got me thinking about how little awareness advertisement and thing happens happening to improve the awareness of this disease and how this would be a great topic to look into for my thesis.

Gen X

Until I read this article I never really thought about generation x, sure I heard about generation x, but I never realized how invisible they were compared to the baby boomers and generation y. When you think of baby boomers immediately you think of people born after the war when times were simple and happy, things like dinners, roller skates and drive-in movies. When you think about generation y you think about the internet age, where everything is fast pace and done electronically; facebook, twitter, myspace, youtube, people in this generation are superficial and materialistic, everything is always me me me me. But, When you think of generation x...what do you think about? unless your born in or around the generation x era, you may find it to find an image that immediately forms in you head, but when you really think about it you realize that generation x has influenced a huge part of of what makes generation y generation y. Gen Xers are responsible a lot of the music we listen from punk rock to rap and hip hop, they are the makers of youtube and myspace, youtube being one of the most time-wasting yet influence tool of our time. A lot of the fashion of the generation x era is make a resurgence in today's fashion as well.
I thought that is was really interesting because I've never really thought about it until I read this article.

Method Designing by Jessica Helfand

This was really the only reading of the 3 that interested me, and thank the Lord that it was short, because God knows i don't have enough time to sit and read all 3 readings every week if they're each 10 pages long, and then expect to remember specific parts of them for a test every other week on top of all the other thing i have to read for other classes and things i have to remember between the time i read them and the test, not to mention that this course is only 0.25 of a credit...ridiculous, and this whole blog business...Lord have mercy, don't get me started on that, that's a completely different story.
But anyways, this reading by Jessica Helfand was about her concern with the way the students of design go about creating there work. Helfand was shocked at how unoriginal the work was and she blamed it on the "method design" which she complains "amplifies personal memory and replays it as objective truth" and states that it's " extremely subjective and extremely seductive". Helfand hopes that future designers will think for themselves.

I understand what Helfand is saying, but at the same time i see why student design turns out unoriginal, from an OCAD point of view. Here at OCAD research is not focused on at all until the 3rd year, which i guess is a little late. So up until and during 3rd year work is usually created from what we think will work rather than what we've discovered will work in terms of the problem we're trying to solve through our designs. And what we think will work is usually styles/methods we've seen on the internet, TV and other forms of media. Another issue is time, at OCAD, teachers are always handing out 3 to 6 projects per class and when you combined that with 5 or 6 courses during the semester including liberal studies courses, that's a lot of work. Sure the work will be handed in on time and may look visually appealing, but the quality of the design in terms of thought process is usually lacking because we are trying to pump out project after project like factory workers. There's just not enough time given to sit down and really think about what your designing.

CBC News Interview with Frank Gehry

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2008/11/13/gehry-ago.html

We finally decided on a topic for our group, researching the information design and wayfinding aspects of the A.G.O. and coming up with ways to improve on it.

I found this article from the CBC News website which had an interview with the designer Frank Gehry about what he was thinking when he designed the new A.G.O. I think it should pretty usefully to our group, not only does he talk about the design, but he talks about how the A.G.O. was before and all the problems there were and why it needing improving.