LAST CALL!!!

Time is running out guys!! If you want to purchase any more awesome hand made original door hangers let us know soon!! We are having our last craft night for the semester this upcoming Wednesday, April 28th, 2010! They’re only $10 and remember…they’re original!
We would just like to say thank you to all the people who helped in contributing to our business. You really helped us and D.I.V.A’S bring more awareness of teen pregnancy to the city of San Antonio. This has been a great semester for both of our businesses. We learned a lot and still had fun. Hopefully we’ll continue seeing a change and decrease in teen pregnancy. Don’t forget to visit our facebook page Links of Life and also visit D.I.V.A’S webpage www.divineadolescents.org, GIVE CHANGE TO MAKE A CHANGE!! Thank you for supporting a great cause!

Teen Pregnancy in San Antonio.

Teen pregnancy is a huge epidemic in San Antonio. As most of you know Links of Life was created to raise awareness about teen pregnancy in San Antonio and to help the non-profit organization D.I.V.A’S by donating a percentage of our profits to them. According to Metro Health, in 2005 teen pregnancy for young ladies ages 15-17 was 39 per thousand, that’s 82% higher than the national rate of 21.4 per thousand. Although the number has decreased since the peak of 58.9 per thousand in 1994, teen pregnancy is still a huge problem. Recently in class Tracey, Founder of D.I.V.A’S, informed us that teen pregnancy is rising again. Once we feel that teen pregnancy is finally dropping, it increases again. How can we help?? We need to educate, educate, and educate these young ladies and men from the time they enter junior high or even sooner in some cases. Seton Homes is a great organization who houses these pregnant teens and their babies once they’re born. They provide them with a shelter and parenting skills so when they’re older they are able to support themselves and their babies. Let’s bring more awareness to San Antonio to stop teens from having to resort to Seton Homes. Preach adolescence to these young ladies and men. Let them know they have a potential for a great future ahead of them. We’ve made progress so far…so let’s keep doing so!!


http://www.sanantonio.gov/health/PW-TeenPregnancy.html

1st Set of Orders

After having to change our original plans, Links of Life's first set of orders are now finished. The customers loved them!!! Thank you for your orders!

Give Change 2 Make A Change

Links of life raised $307.13 for D.I.V.A'S Thank you to everyone that showed their support by buying bracelets and giving donations.

Craft Night!

We met up at Brittani's apartment to work on door hangers that were ordered. Before heading over there, we shopped at Michaels for supplies which included paint, scrapbook stickers, and rhinestones. We took turns painting hangers and working on detail work. Since we realized that buying stickers were on the expensive side, we decided that we'll put our artistic abilities and creativity to work on future hangers. After about three hours spent on Brittani's apartment floor we finished our hangers and worked on packaging them. We found plastic baggies for individual hangers and white paper gift bags for grouped orders. We tagged the bags with our logo and a thank you note and a bow in our color. Everything has received good feedback from our customers and hopefully that will send more business our way.

Selling On Campus

Today we spent all morning selling doortags made by us and bracelets made by Tracy and the girls from D.I.V.A.S, as well as taking donations in a jar.

Tracy joined us and really got students who were passing by motivated to donate any change they had by coming up with the slogan, "Give change to make change." We also sold a couple of bracelets and even got a few orders for doortags. A group of students from another organization donated some change to us, as well as inviting us to sell doortags at their Talent Show event later in the evening.

When we finished and counted our money, we were pleasantly surprised at the amount we earned with donations alone. We didn't get as many doortag orders as we would've hoped but we are optimistic about the future since students are now aware of our presence on campus. Hopefully, they won't be caught off guard next time they see us.

Since the invite to the talent show wasn't expected, only one of our members was able to go and promote our doortags. It was a really good opportunity to bring awareness about our business and to D.I.V.A.S, but unfortunately we didn't any orders that evening. A few people signed up for more information on an emailing list which will help keep their interest in our doortags for the future.

Annoucement!

Selling Fun, Lovely, and Awesome Doortags at the University of Texas at San Antonio 1604 Campus from 9am to 1PM March 26th, Friday!

Please come out to see us and also checkout/buy our doortags.

See them on our Facebook page and become a fan!

http://tinyurl.com/ybh7sp2

We will also be selling D.I.V.A. bracelets with lovely sterling silver butterfly charms, "Because I'm Worth It" Bracelets, and T-Shirts.

In the process

Got together at Brittani's house to make new doortags. Most of our signs looks like for girls but we got it down with some ideas that are unisex and for guys to have on their door too. Getting ready to pre-sell/sell Friday March 26th at The University of Texas at San Antonio 1604 Campus.

Getting down to business

Got together for a meeting, "getting down to business." Need start executing what we have been talking about. We brainstorm our ideas in what we need to do.

• Make Shirts for Links of Life (LOL)
• Make different templates and color of doortags
• Trifold of information about D.I.V.A.'s
• Signage
• Word of mouth - show friends, family, and classmates of our doortags

Please Join our Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/linksoflifefacebook
Will be posting more pictures of our doortags.

Hanging out with the D.I.V.A.'s & D.I.T.'s

Brittani, Christina, Stephanie, Melissa, and Monica went to Tracy's home to meet the girls and help them make their bracelets. We help the girls tips in tricks in making the bracelets and brainstorm in different design to make. We also learn about the organization and what it means to be a D.I.V.A.

Pictures are posted on our Facebook! http://tinyurl.com/hangingwithdivas

Check out our Facebook page and Become a Fan! http://tinyurl.com/linksoflifefacebook

Reading Assignment

Our group's assigned book, Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems by Michael Strong and John Mackey, gave us a better idea of how capitalism can improve not only on an individual level but also on a global level. It displays Entrepreneurs in a positive light and gives us many examples of how capitalism has helped to create a world where people can have the right to make money while contributing to society. The book emphasizes that by harnessing the power to create a market to help those in need, we can benefit all who are involved both directly and indirectly. Another important aspect is that in order to become an entrepreneur, one must be willing to take risks and have the strength to follow through, which also helps that individual grow as a person. Having read this novel, we are now more aware of the positive impact our endeavors will make for the girls of D.I.V.A.s. Our hope is to use the information to make this business as successful as possible by improving ourselves and the lives of these young women through capitalism.

Class opinion on product

Links of Life presented to the class about the product being sold and the progress made to start-up the business. The consumer target will be selling beaded jewelry to ladies and young girls and decorative door tags to college students. Our colleagues critiqued and gave ideas on how we can sell and make our products. For example was focus on making 3-5 different door tags templates and just personalized with the buyer's name.

Brittani and Melissa met with Tracy on Friday to talk about the items to made and sold. So far, it was decided to teach the girls to make beaded jewelry on Saturday, March 13.

Plan of Action

In our meeting on Friday February 19 the agenda was to find stores with quality jewelry supplies at an affordable cost. We originally were going to purchase our supplies from Fire Mountain Gems, but different group members suggested that we searched different stores for better prices. The stores that were searched included Michaels, Jo-Ann’s, Wal Mart, and hobby Lobby. Melissa and Brittani searched Wal Mart and Michaels which had a wide selection of beads and charms. Monica was able to find discounts and coupons for Jo-Ann’s and Michaels to purchase our jewelry supplies. Melissa searched hobby lobby and was informed that every week the store has 50% of on Jewelry and crafts. Our goal for the next two weeks is to make samples to pre-sell to customers. We narrowed down our product line to pre-selling door hangers, Bracelets, and necklaces.

Visiting D.I.V.A.s In Training (D.I.T.)

Last week, 6th of February, Brittani, Melissa, and Stephanie met with Tracy and her D.I.T.'s to introduce ourselves, let them know what we wanted to do to help, and get information on what they are really needing. Our mission was to see first hand how D.I.V.A.'s meetings were structured and how we could assist them in making a profit. The profit would be beneficial for the teen moms as extra income for baby necessities and other expenses they may have.

During the meeting we were able to learn the different personalities of the girls in order to determine what we can do with them for them to make money. We also were able to understand what was really needed and why they needed the money. As a side project, Brittani is working with Tracy to find some sororities on campus who would be willing to talk to the girls about the benefits of being in a sorority and the life of it. Just a way to open the girls eyes to different things that are offered in college.

Brainstorming and Decision

As a group, we sat and thought about some causes that we wanted to make a difference in. After further research, we chose three different causes. The first cause was San Antonio's Battered Women and Children's shelter, we wanted to something for the children. Next, was the Catholic Worker Movement, this cause was for homeless families with children. They provided shelter for these families and different courses for them. Lastly, we also chose the Presbyterian Children's Home. It was a home for children who were looking to be adopted.

After coming to a consensus, we chose the Battered Women's Shelter. Their mission was the same as ours. They wanted to change the lives of needy families. We later had a change of heart during class presentations when we heard Tracy talking about her non-profit organization for teen girls who have babies and others who have vowed to be celibate until marriage. We felt that we wanted to help her because the babies need donations and the girls need skills to earn money. We wanted to help Tracy to advance her organization but also help the girls to earn money to take care of their children.

First Post

As a group, we have debated over what our group name would be. Since our project was to help teen moms by making key chains, hanging door plaques, and charms, we decided on the name "Links of Love". Unfortunately, further research showed us that the name was already taken by a breast cancer awareness group. We had to think of a new name or risk copyright infringement. After further discussion, we decided on "Links of Life", since the children of these teen moms are our greatest concern. We are hoping to help improve the lives of these children by giving the teens moms some useful craft skills to help them earn some extra income.

The next step for us was to create a blog. Monica and I decided to create one here at Blogger (previously known as Blogspot), and to do that we had to create a gmail account first. Monica ran into some complications while trying to create one when she thought putting the date we started this project as the account birthday. She ended up getting an error message that wouldn't let her continue due to the Child Safety Act. Eventually, we were able to get linksoflife2010@gmail.com to work. When we got to www.blogger.com, we saw that an account with the name linksoflife was already created by a guy in 2004, so we added 2010 to the name and now we have established our official blog!

We're still working on a logo and a official product line, so we will update soon about that next time!