Hi there,

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner, been a difficult start to the week this week and I had been caught up with other things before now, my apologies. Unfortunately, we are still yet to have a primary financial sponsor for the Charitable Trust set up and so I'm still juggling this stuff with other paid work I am stuck having to do also for the meantime - such is life! Anyhow, I wanted to fill you in on the event we had Friday, on the day we outlined the overall objective of the trust and what we are trying to achieve and unveiled some of our plans going forward from this point and really just wanted to get some youth to have the chance to try out our script and get in up on YouTube!

Check out our MASHUP videos from the day, I personally editted two mixes and we are now encouraging others to make edits and mixes for themselves. It gives a great insight and taster of all our videos on the playlist - All who partook in the afternoon had great fun, with a prize pack worth over $300 being shared between two 13 year old Massey High Students, Emotion & Vanessa for the best video of the day. You can see all the camera captured on the Be Nice Online playlist on YouTube and be sure to check out the video script "Mashup" which is a compilation of many of the various scripts we got recorded on the day - http://youtu.be/o7CQARqlqT4

We did experience our fair share of glitches with our rushed launch last week, (including missing a lot of a school traffic with a late set up) but we still managed to engage a few of the local kids in the community, with roughly 5 or 6 of them starting from start to end. With a range of people willing to get in front of the camera and overall we had relatively high engagement with a slightly smaller than anticipated audience. Luckily enough for us, the Minister Paula Bennett stopped in and even recorded a short clip for us which we added to our campaign mix from the launch which you can find on our YouTube channel too. We could not have done it without the support of many other individuals and organizations including Chade from Sports Waitakere, Skylar from ICE box, Jane from Massey Community Center, Sam from Diesel Phoenix, Richard from Mr Whippy, the Red Bull girls (sorry no names!), the team from PDF2Print, Mike from Burger Fuel Lincoln Road, Andy from Social Safe & others.... And we have already lined up our next appearance with the YouTube Booth which will be this Saturday at local concert held at Zeal in Henderson called Revelry20Eleven.

you can check out our YouTube channel here- http://www.youtube.com/user/sweetassocial

We are hoping to be able to run this #BeNiceOnline YouTube awareness building campaign for between a six and twelve month period. We will feature weekly competitions and prizes awarded for week’s top video capturing the “Be Nice Online" message. Monthly prize packs for the best video edit of the month that represents our campaign script and message. Plus with our “YouTube Booth” out and about at various events, we are hoping event organisers can also assist with additional prizes for top videos of the day from each event. We also have plans to implement and facilitate a peer mentoring type system using online technologies where these kids can support and help one and other. Combining this with a training and mentoring type program where teaching and facilitating these messages being deliver will be

done in a "Pay It Forward" or "Crowd-Sourcing" fashion to help us spread the message. We also have intention to push the viral YouTube video edits submitted for prizes to the mainstream media channels where we will pressure them for airtime to build awareness of what is a broader social problem.

After all remembering this is after the publicity of cases the likes of Natalia Burgess the Facebook impersonator and with at least 3 reports of kids taking their own lives after being victims of cyber bullying. And with a 13 year old on National TV speaking out about bullying in our schools and meeting with John Key even, it is important to remember that she is not old enough to know what the "Y2K Bug". Those not old enough to remember the dawn of the new millennium will have no recollection of a world without the internet.

We hope that Youth Week 2012 will see us enjoying what we hope to be much greater awareness of these issues, as we

put on our Celebrate Technology & Youth (Week) Event in 2012. We have not yet secured the required financial sponsorship to fully support our plans and intentions, however we have seen great support from the "social media" engaged brands to help us make this a reality. Already we have had prizes and support offered but no where near the amount we will require to pull this off. Also, as it is our intention to hopefully take this campaign to a national level and run it throughout the various schools and youth groups some of whom have already expressed interest, I am going to need help. I have worked out that we can be eligible for the WINZ grant to hire and train youth that have been on the unemployment benefit for more than 3 months, so the $5000 they grant you would almost cover the cost of labour, but as a NFP, this is not an arena I am familiar with- I assume that approaching a corporate sponsor for financial backing is my best bet but I thought you may be able to help me out with this one if possible, even if you have some feedback or suggestions potentially?

__________________________________________________________________WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM THIS EVENT LAUNCH & SHOWCASE OF THE YOUTUBE BOOTH

We had our launch event, trial run for our “YouTube Booth” and Youth Week ‘Celebrate Technology’ event on Friday 27th May. We had the Wii projecting games onto the Community Hall wall, the YouTube Booth in the side room, Sam from Diesel Phoenix brought down his guitar and treated us to some acoustic and Mr Whippy and the Red Bull Girls came down in support and even did a video for us each!! But as with all “firsts”, the lessons and mistakes give considerable opportunity for learning! Here's some of ours…

Always give the printers a time estimate that is before the time required as a absolute cut off!* Young girls were much more willing than teenager or younger boys… Always have your projector going! It makes all the difference for kids to then get to see themselves on the channel instantly. Different people would prefer the booth over talking face to camera with nothing to hide behind! Others would prefer having

costumes and props helpful to getting in front of the camera… The whole script is too long for people to read the whole thing through at events, the call out cards should be used instead with

different filler lines… The kids seemed to prefer the ones that posed a question, like the ‘bystanders can make all the difference, will you?’

The Introduction aspect needs to be made explicit, only a few people introduced themselves… More interaction with their stories and content, need to explicitly ask questions maybe, even have cue cards for booth operator?

*we had a wee glitch with the printers, in the end, we probably missed a fair majority of the major school rush of kids as we were not set up enough to capture the main rush of them, however, in our busiest moments, we were rather inundated so it was fairly clear we needed more “booth operator support” and also potentially another recording device to interact with people not wanting to go into the booth so much.. capture some of the gold in the “saw dust” of prior conversations where we were often engaging people in the concepts but not able to draw them in front of the camera… ___________________________________________

Unfortunately, we were so busy with the booth and engaging the kids and supporters in the content on the day that we didn't really get a chance to take many photos! We did manage to get a few off some others who attended and we have uploaded them to our Facebook page! We hope that while we continue to talk to, engage with and build awareness among and about Kiwi youth, we will be able to adapt and modify our drafted solutions and online facilitated peer mentoring for youth that we intend of creating in application format for the likes of sites like Facebook, Bebo & MySpace, where students will be able to seek support and guidance from each others experiences online as well as in the "real world".

Hopefully you are still able to assist us in making this a reality in whatever way you can and we really appreciate your taking the time to contact and read all about what we have been doing. With these issues in the headlines in recent weeks, I have a feeling

that this time we may have a little more interest from the general public when we are trying to warn them about the dangers online, especially when parents are largely not present and justice systems are powerless. Lets just hope more kids and parents alike realize this without having to first experience the kind of issues we have seen until now. To be quite honest with you, I am rather out of my depth with this and have been trying to get in contact with Tori McCauley, the 13 year old on Close Up the same day as our launch as I think she could defiantly help and was incredibly articulate! ;)

I would greatly appreciate any feedback and insights you may be able to offer and would also recommend you check out the site again as I have also put a few updates up on the site too - you can find at www.sweetassocialmedia.com

Cheers

Jess Maher

022 671 4060 Project CoordinatorSweet As Social Media