Compared to last week, this one’s been fairly slow and relaxing– or at least theoretically it was supposed to be. I found Andrew Gaucher’s talk very interesting; I found myself too bad he wasn’t able to join ACE in time before he graduated (?). The green movement within the Okanagan is becoming more and more important as our beautiful region’s being paved over and built up.

Sustainability is essential to a socially responsible business; because without that, what’s the point? If everything in Kelowna’s going to be constructionized then the whole allure–or draw– of the environment is gone. In a business sense it makes sense to protect our investments.

Unfortunately more mentors have been having trouble getting in contact with their teams. I’ve been trying a few different methods of helping them making up the hours, like giving them contact info for the schools and teacher sponsors, and getting their cell phone numbers so that the students could have an alternate method of contacting them. Email doesn’t seem to be working the way it should: easy, instant, and reliable.

This week’s class was pretty amazing. I learned quite a bit from both of the speakers: Randy and Angie. It was interesting to get perspective on two different companies along the continuum. I’d seen YellowBrick before–in Orchard Plaza I think–and never realized that it was so organically inclined. The fact that she’s been doing this since before it was popular is something to be lauded. Randy pointing out the limitations of his business was enlightening. and demonstrated the need for specialized businesses.

Because some mentors are having difficulty filling their hours Kyleen offered them an opportunity to help out Goshop.gs‘ owner. He had an interesting Web site, but I was not especially impressed with his presentation. The three videos weren’t that inspiring and his concept didn’t quite mesh.

1. The advertising scheme isn’t flexible for the variety of small businesses.
2. It makes brick and mortar stores’ compete with the lower online prices.
3. The fact that they force visitors to register to take advantage of their features is a mistake. It’s just an extra hassle that will turn off a large segment of the target market.

Whew, this week was a bit busy with the YE’s Task 2 orientation and ACE practice presentations. Task 2’s all about Financial Analysis, so the actual presentation was pretty boring; I have a feeling that I turned a few students off of accounting. However, I’m extremely proud of the actual PowerPoint because I used no bullet points… at all! I used an example of a Pie and a Lawn mowing service to give examples of the different concepts.

Oh well.

Rachel was able to help me out and brought the mood up overall with her witty and funny announcerisms.

Also, I was very glad that a few mentors were able to come, and meet up with their teams; unfortunately most of the KSS teams failed to showed up, which will make it more difficult to get them connected. If Task 1 was any indication, this will make it way harder.

Unfortunately I had to skip the second half of the 339 class because of the orientation, so I missed Elvia Picco’s talk. However, it was interesting to hear everyone’s project updates though. Not every project runs perfectly, which is nice to know that I’m not the exception.

This week’s been… not fun. Task 1 isn’t really  working out as well as I was hoping even though it should’ve been way more streamlined than it is now. The main problem is the fact that the available times that the schools offer don’t work with the mentors’ schedules. I don’t understand why they can’t offer more times; for some reason we had more flexibility in the previous 2 years, than this current one.

I had to run out to MBSS to help out some of the teams so that they didn’t get a mentor due to the midterms and just being waay out on the Westside. This is definitely a lot more work than I was planning on. The teams had some interesting ideas: One was thinking of using toilet flushes to generate energy, another was biodegradable pencils, and the last was a “Rent-a-car” style business that rented environmentally friendly cars to teens. We weren’t able to get ahold of one team because of exams or something but I have a good feeling about these guys (and girls).

The group presentation went amazing! We were very well prepared for the questions and pretty much everyone was blown away by the in depth work that we’d put into it. Kyleen seemed to like the fact that we reviewed the other articles–which was Amanda’s idea I believe. When reading “Merging Mission…” I have to agree with the overall sentiment: it’s still an extremely relevant article that NEEDS to be read by more organizations.

In the world of YE, it’s getting harder and harder to match the mentors with their schools. Especially after many of the schools canceling at the last second (or not at all) due to midterms. It’s hard enough to organize everything, and while I’ve made some mistakes, this just erodes the mentors’ confidence in the program.