All the things we want them to learn and do

Our children are busier than ever before, with more homework, more after-school activities, more rushing from here to there. Most parents spend a lot of their time driving kids to different places. It's good when kids are active, but just sometimes, I think, my kids are doing a little bit too much. There are things that we push our kids to do even if they don't want to do it and there are things that our kids want to do but we are not that keen.

Volunteers roster for Willoughby Combined Schools

As part of School24 we offer an online volunteers roster. Some schools work differently than others so we are always happy to customise our work to fit some schools unique requirements. In the case of Willoughby they have more that 120 volunteers. The roster for 2010 had to be available before the end of 2009. Previously it was all manual work based on a static Excel file. (I think most schools are still using the manual process for volunteers rostering). We explained to the school the benefits of moving to a dynamic databased roster. After we all agreed, we worked closely with Shirley and other volunteers to get the requirements right. We had only few days to do it and we did. It was a bit of work, but the feeling to be able to meet the deadline was great.
On the D day, they clicked on a Submit button and every volunteer received their shifts via emails. They were also able to print the shifts for the volunteers who don't want to receive email notifications.
Volunteers could login and view their shifts, but the roster administrator is also able to email the shifts to any volunteer by a simple click of a mouse.

Now they have a roster ready for them all year. They can access it from anywhere. They can view, add and delete.. they can also communicate with volunteers.

We are happy to share this work with any other school who think this solution could make their life easier. The School does not have to use our ordering system to be able to have access to the volunteer roster. The volunteer roster is a FREE tool and it doesn't require school registration.

Enjoy!

Sun CEO quits . . . over Twitter

Twitter has so many uses. People use it to communicate with their family and friends, people use it to take polls/surveys, President Obama used it for his presidential campaign, etc.

Now, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, used Twitter to resign. On his tweet, he wrote:

“Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more”

Schwartz was known as one of the few Fortune 500 CEO bloggers, and is recognized for his efforts to bring greater transparency into the corporate world.

The new canteen manager

In the last 3 years or more doing this job, I have seen canteen managers come and go. The truth it's not the easiest job out there, but It's a rewarding job. At least you know that you are dealing with children, you are doing something for future generation and for the future society. I admire what you are doing and everyone should. Keep up the good work.

Why aren't we charging the parents?

Why aren't we charging for the use of the system?

This question was asked many times, but for me to answer it correctly let's look at who is behind this system and how it started.

Why aren't we charging the schools?

Some of the providers of similar systems charge up to nearly $700 just to sign a school in. They also take a percent of what school canteen make and they charge parents a fee for each order that goes through their system. No wonder that some of them are already listed on the BRW magazine as fast growing companies.

If you look at the web sites of some providers you will see that the people behind these companies are bank directors and corporate like business oriented people. They saw a niche and an opportunity to make money in schools so they jumped in.

Not that there is a problem with making a profit from a business or I have anything against businesses. For me i

t's all fine till we understand that School canteens, uniform shops etc are run by volunteers. Surplus funds made by the canteen, the tuckshop or the uniform shop at the end of the school year are generally donated back to the school to finance projects such as shade cloths over play grounds, new play ground equipment or other such projects.

The volunteers are parents like you and me.

We do it to make our kids happy to see us helping and to help the school raise fund. We

feel good about it.

But if we see that some of that money we work hard to generate for the school is going to some BRW listed company or others bank accounts the fun will stop here. We will feel that things are not the same anymore.

That how I feel too as a parent and a system provider. I feel it's not fair to take anything from that money the volunteers work hard to generate for the school. Not 5%, not 3%, not 1% and not even 1cent out of it. It's not about money, it's about principles. Volunteers do something to help and we should support them and help them without taking anything from the profit they make for whatever cause they work for.

Why aren't we charging the parents?

I started this system before many of the major players we see today. It was something unique at the time. We had a couple of articles on the papers including the department of education SidebySide magazine (and on their web site) and the Sun Herald. I was contacted by many business people after the articles and I was offered business advice of how to profit from this idea. I ended up rejecting all the advice offered to me. I even rejected the 10cent per order we had at some stage thought about. It's not about how much but it's about the principles and what motivated me to start this system in the first place. I did it for one purpose only: to help my kids school canteen. I had no business plan or business idea behind it. Just like any parent out there, I felt something could be improved to make volunteers and parents life easier and I did it.

We all volunteer to help in coaching/managing our kids teams, take on the responsibility to manage a local sport club, or raise our hands to do something innovative for a local community project, etc.. If we all start charging for the services we provide to help the community and think of how much money we will make out of it as our only motivation then things won't be the same anymore..

That's what the people who offered me bsuiness advice didn't understand and couldn't believe. I'm sure that some of them thought of my approach as weird, but one has to be a parent and a volunteer and feel the way I feel about it to understand. IT'S NOT ABOUT MONEY! (and try to milk any dollar you can from hard working parents and volunteers)

As parents we donate a lot of our time, money and help to the schools, the clubs our kids go to. (I speak for myself of course, but I'm sure some parents will share these feelings). I'm constantly paying fees for different things: excursions, band, sport, registration, donations, this and that.. I thought why not give something for FREE to the parents (regardless of their financial status). Give them something for free for a change. I just want to see this happening for a change and prove that it's possible. I wanted to make a difference and go against the standards. By offering this system free of charge and not taxing parents for using it (be it 20 cent per order or $2) I also wanted to send a message to many corporate greedy people out there who are charging schools hundreds of dollars and trying to milk every cent they can from parents.

Going in this direction, I agree there are challenges, but I'm commited to make it work. So far, things are going well. The number of schools is growing and the best news of all is that the number of parents who are behind this project is also growing.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • our project is open to every parent out there who shares our vision and who would like to help. Every service we will add, it will help keep the funds raised by volunteers stay within the community instead of giving it away to some money hungry companies. The technology is available and there are many use of it that we can do together to help our local schools and sport clubs and keep the money raised by volunteers within the community.