Update: We have worked all school year on our project. We have written, printed, and handed brochures at events in our town like the Pumpkin Festival and Paris Art Fair. We have created video PSA’s that have shown on our local TV station, and have spoke to tons of groups of grown ups in our town like the Rotary Club, the City Council, the Red Hat Ladies at Prime Time, and our school board. We have been interviewed on our local radio station, KOYN, about our project. We held a Day of HOPE open house at our city animal shelter in January. The KOYN radio came and broadcast from there for us! We would describe the animals that were available for adoption and got 8 animals adopted that day! We wrote and illustrated our children’s book, it’s called Pound Pals. It turned out so cool. We are having a book signing at our Hastings book store tomorrow and you can check the book out (and buy it!) at Amazon.com. We are trying to film a dog training video before the end of school. We found at this year that a lot of the animals at the shelter are brought in by their owners- how sad! Some of those are turned in because of bad behavior so we hope we can do some things to help people train their dogs and teach them to behave instead of giving them up. We have used the grant money to pay for the printing of the brochures, to buy dog training books to start a training library at our local shelter and will also be donating part of them to the Paris Public Library so people in our town will have access to training books for free. The rest of the grant money has gone towards buying copies of the book we have written that we are donating to our school libraries in our town, and the Paris Public Library. We have even mailed a copy to Ellen DeGeneres because we know how much she likes animals; we hope she likes our book. In case you didn’t see, we got featured on Petfinder.org too, thanks Kristen ! We have tried to put information about our project online. Some of our parents helped with some of the things we’re still learning. Check out our sites to see some pictures, our videos, and out book! Petfinder link! http://blog.petfinder.com/petfinder/2009/03/11/teens-saving-pets-part-2/ Blog http://www.projecthope.edublogs.org/ Videos and Pics http://www2.parisisd.net/crockett/socrates/Welcome.html Buy our BOOK!!! http://www.amazon.com/Pound-Pals-Life-Shelter-Dog/dp/1442137541/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241288424&sr=8-1 Do Something for Pets……Pass On HOPE !

Maggie Maxwell
Number of people in the organization: 40
Number of people impacted: 30000
Describe the impact the grant had: The DoSomething grant was great and when the newspaper reporter came to our open house at our shelter, she had a lot of questions about it. She accidently said in her article that we had won a grant from Build A Bear, but we had only applied for one along with the Humane Association and we did not get it. I think the Do Something grant made people impressed that we were serious and wanted to make a difference. We are even using the DoSomething in some of our slogans- Do Something for Pets- Pass on HOPE. Also, because I won the DoSoemthing grant, the teen blogger for Pet FInder.com wrote a blog on us for that site- that's so cool!
Project highlights: 1. Our children's book is a very imporatant part,because it symbolizes how we tryed to reach younger children. It's called Pound Pals and you can buy it on Amazon.com. It tells the story of several dogs who end up at the shelter then get adopted. It lets little kids know how homeless animals feel. We got to have a book signing at Hastings Book store in our town and we donated copies of the book to all of the libraries in the schools in Paris and to the Paris Public Library. 2. Handing out brochures at local activities and stores I think influnenced the community deeply about our towns needs. 3. I also feel being on the radio many times helped advertise our project and spread the word about the shelter.
How did the project unfold and develop? We had a few problems along the way but we were able to work everything out.Our community has been very surrportive of our project. The Humane Socity has worked with us to help the pets and we have been in the newspaper many times.