My Onion (:

Hello, my name is Brandi, I am also one of the awesome people from the UNITY Youth Leadership Program, and one of the people who came up with the idea for a skatepark in North Adams. This post is named "My Onion" because like onions, I, as well as a lot of people, have layers. And I have never seen a community with so many layers no matter if it is from kids to adults, come together as one, like this one. North Adams and all of its supporters are just totally fabulous and should be so proud of themselves! So this is why you should vote, in my opinion, or onion, which ever you prefer. Think about the youth, we are your future! I know, as a teenager, we didn't really feel respected as we do now. Seeing all of the older community members spread their wings and help us to sore to a new destination in life and ourselves is truly inspiring as well as refreshing knowing they are there for us. So, why vote you still ask? Great question! Look at all of us teens working together with everyone we can to try and not get, but earn this. Also, lets keep youth off the streets, off drugs, and in schools. A lot of people say that with a skatepark in town youth are going to be engaging more in these types of activity's such as smoking pot, or even going to the extreme and dropping out. Lets face it, youth don't need a skatepark for those things. They are going to do what they want, and just because it's there doesn't mean they are going to use it for those purposes. And it’s not just for the youth either. It’s for the adults too. A nice place to take your child who wants to learn to skate, or go have a coffee and admire the success of a community sticking together as a whole and making something happen for everyone.
So, what are you waiting for? VOTE!
You know you want to! Every way, Everyday!
Via text (text 102522 to 73774),
Via facebook on the refresh everything app,
and
Via refresheverything.com with your email.
Come on, it's what? 30 seconds out of your day to help and change the community in the most positive way.
I look forward to seeing our ranking reach number one with people like you voting!
And remember, just a few days left, so lets get everyone you know to vote, vote, vote! :D

Donations + Thank Yous Round-Up

 ...Our billboard is up! I drove down Route 8 yesterday afternoon to check it out. It looks beautiful. No matter how this contest turns out, I have to say that I'm excited to see such a public display of community support for something that kids/teens want and are willing to work hard for. Thank you all.

We've had a lot of other forms of community support rolling in over the past week. Here are a few people and businesses who I'd like to give special shout-outs to:

front/back of our postcard

*Keith Bona (Bona Marketing and City Councilor) had donated a great deal of printing for the project. He made 1,000 stickers that we are selling at a suggested donation price of $1. You can buy them at the Coalition office and Papyri Books (NA). Keith also made about 1,000 colorful postcards with voting instructions for the Pepsi contest about 1,000 colorful business cards wth instructions. If you have a place to distribute these great promotional items, please let me know or stop by the office!

*Excelsior Printing donated 1,000 copies of our flyer. This allowed us to continue to give Village Pizza, Christo's Famous Pizza, and Supreme Pizza and Wings flyers to attach to their delivery boxes. Special thanks to Julie Fruscio at Excelsior for reaching out and making it happen! And much love to our local pizza joints for helping us spread the word.

*Becks Printing also donated 1,000 copie of the flyer! This might seems like a lot, but with 3 pizza places distributing flyers we go through hundreds in a weekend. Thank you, Becks!

*A friend from college who I haven't seen in years and my best friend from high school both mailed in donations to help defray our promotional costs. Thank you so much Beth Ethier and Kate Forrestall! 

Please be sure to thanks these printers and pizza places for their support of our project! 

Our Name in Lights

Check this out!!!

Look out for our billboard which will be up on Route 8 in North Adams, near Ernie's Autos. Should be up by this Wednesday, 9/15. It's a lighted board, so you'll be able to see it all hours of the day and night. We're very excited and hopeful that this will bring us a boost in votes! Please let us know what you think when you see it.

Important Fact About Texting Votes!

Just wanted to make sure that everyone knows this key fact about texting in your votes: if you don't get a confirmation text back from Pepsi, your vote did NOT go through. Please send again. This is frustrating, I know, but it will usually go through on the 2nd or 3rd try. I wanted to bring this up because it's happened to me a few times. THANKS FOR YOUR VOTES!

Labor Day Weekend!

Hey Everybody!

This Saturday our skatepark volunteers worked at the North Adams Farmers Market and at MASS MoCA's Reggae Soul Dance Party! At the Farmers Market we got to see several friendly faces who wanted to help us out. I even taught people who had never texted before how to send in their vote through a text message! We drew on the sidewalk again and were helped out by passer-bys. This time we didn't just have flyers we had delicous baked goods from Kate Merrigan, Bert Lamb and Laini Sporbert. There were brownies, blondies, muffins, etc. The prices ranged from $0.50-$1 and were a big hit. Some people even just donated their change instead. I'm amazed at how our community is being pulled together by this project.

Later on in the day some of our volunteers went to the Reggae Soul Dance Party! The volunteers handed out lots of flyers and danced! Volunteer, Chris Cozzaglio said, "It was amazingly fun and everyone was really responsive, even the band!" Even with all of this support from North Adams residents at the Farmers Market and the Reggae Soul Dance Party attendants we're at number 35 =[ If everyone posts a status on facebook or tells one friend, I bet we could get up to number 29 again this week! How awsome would that be? The young people of North Adams are finally doing something to work for what we want but we can't do it without you! So please don't forget to vote everyday, 3x a day!

Thanks so much!

Kaitlin LaValley(you're number one fan!)

The first 3 days by Kaitlin!!

My names Kaitlin LaValley and I was one of the original teens to bring up the idea of a skatepark. At the first UNITY meeting we made "our dream North Adams." When we put a skatepark in north adams, we thought it was just a crazy dream and now its become a reality! This is all thanks to YOU! Everyone at the coalition has been working our butts off trying to get everyone to hear about what we've been doing. Me and my friend and fellow UNITY member, Chris Cozzaglio, started off on Tuesday bringing crazy ideas to our awsome principal Mr. Klompus. We asked 1)Can we announce our plan to the school during lunches and get them to vote on their cells? and 2) Hang up posters in the school and around Adams during our Independant Learning Time? We figured he might let us announce it and hang up posters in BArT but he suprised us when he let us do everything we wanted! So like everyone else working on this awsome project we got to go around informing people about whats going on. We got to talk with some really great people with great ideas for a few hours while hanging posters in local shops. After school we went to the coalition to continue our kickoff day. We handed out flyers, called Tanchhhhh from Fly 92, and even posed for pictures!
The next day I continued my advertising as i spammed all of my friends and family through my cell and facebook. I was super excited to hear that everyone voting, thats YOU, had us in 27th place! That is absolutely crazy seeing as this started with a silly poster board and a North Adams designed by us. Today got scary when all my friends asked what was wrong as the texting was down. However, to make up for it my awesome teachers Mr. Griffin and Ms. Calderara, let me and my friend Nicole paint the texting numbers on their cars! I'm so happy with how much our community is helping us out! After school I went to the coalition today. As Kate was spamming celebrities me and a few other volunteers made table toppers for local restraunts and stores. I even walked down to Staples to ask about red paper being donated as thats what we use for all the posters and everything hanging around Berkshire County.
So as you can tell it's been a super fun, and super busy 3 days... Tomorrow I'll work my butt off again at the Farmers Market so I hope to see all of our supporters there! Unfortunately I won't be at the Moca dance party but my uber awsome friends will be, so be sure to say hi there too!

Thanks SOOOO much for being so supportive,
Kaitlin LaValley(your number one fan!)

Day 2 Round-Up: Have Heart, Hold on for Big Guns

I've heard from people today who were extremely excited to see us placed variously at #26-#30 in the ranks for the $250K prize money. I spoke with others who were concerned by how far this is from the #1 and #2 spots we need to climb into by 9/30 in order to win the cash. So, I wanted to take a little time here at the end of the day to offer some perspective and encouragement.

First of all, we are, at this moment on 9/2/10, in 27th place. That's 26 places away from first. But you know what? There are 349 total entries in the $250K funding category, so I think it's actually a pretty sweet debut. I'm thrilled by this foothold in the top 30. And I challenge you to think of it that way: a foothold. A spot where we can steady ourselves, assess, and then from which we can launch upward.

Here's some more good news: we haven't even begun yet. Our aces are still up our sleeves. Our big guns are still in the locker. Some upcoming strategies I'd like to keep quiet, lest we leak them to our competitors. But I can share a few bits with you:

• Drury, McCann, and Mount Greylock high schools start school tomorrow. We have students in each school who will be helping to spread the word. SO: those votes have yet to be added.
• We will be tabling at a bunch of community events, but haven't even started yet! Look for us at the North Adams Farmers Market every Saturday in September, at MoCA's Reggae Soul Dance Party this Saturday night, at Pittsfield's Third Thursday, and at events at local high schools and colleges through the month. 
• Billboard. On Route 8 (Curran Highway). Soon. 
• My dear and wacky sister, Meghan Merrigan, has agreed to stand outside NBC's Today Show holding up a sign with our voting info. 
• Your amazing promotional ideas that you've yet to share with us. Please do so in the comments!

Thanks, and please keep VOTING! :)

Cozzaglio's opinion on Skate Park in North Adams

Hey everyone,
My name is Chris Cozzaglio and I'm part of the youth leadership program, where we are trying to get a Skatepark in North Adams. I love the fact that we are doing, what many people have been trying to do for years. Now here we stand strong, with the support of many.
Today was launch day for the contest we entered to win a 250'ooo, and it went amazingly well! There were many volunteers who went all over the berkshires to hang up posters, as well as hand out posters to as many people as we could.
Kaitlin(A close friend and fellow peer from the youth leadership program running this) and I had school today, but we still found time to advertise. We went hung posters around the school, talked to people at lunch, so we talked to the whole school, and we were given permission to get out of school and hang posters all around town. After school, we held up posters to students as they were leaving on the bus or the car ride home to keep the idea of voting fresh in their minds.
After we finished everything to do with getting the skateboard park stuff at school, we went to to the coalition, the officail headquaters for the whole skatepark voting center, and my youth leadership programs regular meeting, and we got to work right away. We put window chalk on the upstairs window, talked to a city councilor about things that we wish to get, to see what he could do. Then we went and put window chalk on The leader of the programs car to advertise wherever we went.
We then finished with that and went out through the town, hanging up and passing out flyers.
Today was an amazing day. We had fun, and were productive all day, and I personally cannot wait until we win, and even if we don't we have back up plans to get a skatepark. It's not a matter of if we get a skatepark, it's just a matter of when!
Have an amazing day, night, afternoo, dawn, or dusk,
Christopher Cozzaglio, 16

Day 1 Round-Up: LAUNCH DAY!

Voting on our project began today! We are super excited. And, though it could go without saying, super caffeinated.

We had an exciting day with dedicated volunteers contributing from 9am until 6pm today. Several of our ever-present and energetic BMX bikers came by to flyer North Adams and Adams and reach out to skaters/bikers at the Adams skatepark. We had some parents and other community members join us as well as a bunch of students from Drury High School and BArT Charter.

 "Today was pretty fun. We got to do so many things to help promote. We even got our school to temporarily change cell policies and let us text our votes!"  --Chris Cozzaglio and Kaitlin LaValley, BArT students + UNITY youth leaders

Some highlights from today's efforts:

• We sidewalk chalked our message on Main Street, NA
• BArT altered their cell policy to allow students to text in their votes during school
• Mass MoCA began spreading the word through their channels, including to their 4,000+ Twitter followers and 11,000+ facebook fans
• We posted flyers and table-toppers at businesses and restaurants in North Adams and Adams
• We spread the word far and wide through the facebooks of our staff/volunteers. We heard that people are voting for us all the way from California to Maine!
• We are currently ranked 27th in the Refresh Everything contest! That is an AMAZING start.

Many, many thanks to our wonderful volunteers and community members for their time, energy, facebook posts, cupcakes, positive attitudes, and creative thinking today!

Moving forward, please be sure to way 3 ways per day, every day!

Also, consider joining us Monday nights at 7pm at 61 Main Street for our volunteer check-in/brainstorming meetings!

Build a Skatepark in NA 101

Teenagers are powerful. And when they have a dream, and they are not afraid to talk about it to everyone they meet, big things can happen. In the fall of 2009, teenagers in the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition's UNITY Youth Leadership Program expressed a desire for a skatepark in North Adams, MA. We talked about it in our program sessions, researched how communities go about building parks, and then started talking. Our group met with City Councilors, with Mayor Richard Alcombright, with a local police officer, and with staff from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA). And a cool thing happened: everyone was excited by the idea of a skatepark.

City officials supported the idea and challenged Youth Leadership Program members to find funding and demonstrate community support. We got to work. We met with staff at Mass MoCA, who expressed a desire to help identify artists to design the park with input from local skaters/BMXers and skatepark engineers (How cool is this? A big, skateable work of art?!). We visited schools and found that 430 out of 450 high school students and staff surveyed wish to see a skatepark built in North Adams.

We searched for funding, looking to state, federal, and private resources. While there were many possible funding routes, the Pepsi Refresh Everything contest quickly revealed itself as our best bet (follow the link to learn how it works!). The contest, while more competitive than most other funding routes, could provide $250K--an amount that could allow us to build a good park. The other thing we liked about the contest? The winners are determined by popular vote. North Adams might not be a big city, but we are a tight-knit community and we are very well networked.

So, we entered the contest. We found out on August 1st that we'll be in the running for the September round of voting. Throughout August, we worked energetically to rally support and spread the word. 50 people attended our two volunteer meetings in late August and agreed to help get out the vote in September. We arranged for feature articles in The North Adams Transcript, The Berkshire Eagle, The Advocate Weekly, and iberkshires.com. We've started flyering and having tables with info at community events. Once September hits, we'll be kicking all of this into overdrive. If we win, we'll have $250 to build a really cool park with skateable artwork. The location is TBD, pending conversations with city officials and Mass MoCA staff. We'll keep you posted! In the meantime, please visit us here often to hear about our progress and learn about ways you can help!