Tommy Slotcavage

Professor Henderson

CAS 138T

23 April 2014

Advocacy Project

In advocating for Empower Orphans, and the establishment of the club here at

Penn State, the main focus group was the students of Penn State.  Although the ultimate

goal is to reach all universities across the nation, the current goal is to get as many

members at Penn State to come to the first meeting as well as join the club.  We felt that

college students would be the most appropriate audience, especially as our goal was to

start a club here at Penn State.  We also felt that college students would be the most likely

to be advocates and be active for the cause of Empowering Orphans.  As many of us that

helped to start this club are friends with Neha, we are extremely motivated to help the

Empower Orphans cause.  We also believe that many others will be motivated to serve

the Empower Orphans cause, and our goal was to motivate as many college students as

we could to come.

In trying to enlist college students to come to our meeting and join the club, we

brainstormed a great deal as to how best to attract the attention of college students.  In

thinking about it, we decided to take a multi-pronged approach.  We tried to utilize as

many means of getting the word out as possible, utilizing our knowledge of Penn State’s

campus and the preferences of students here.

I was in charge of a few of these methods.  The first method that I was in charge

of was Yik-Yak.  Yik-Yak is a form of social media that is extremely prevalent and

popular on college campuses across the nation, and it is also very popular here.  I posted

on Yik-Yak periodically to make sure that the message remained out there, but not too

frequently to get it downvoted every single time that it went up.  The message said:

“Come join Neha Gupta (Holla!) In bringing Empower Orphans to PSU! Info session is

4/22 @ 8:15 in Atherton Hall GFC.  At first, the responses to the yaks were positive, but

as I posted more and more, I started getting fairly profane comments or inappropriate

comments on the yaks.

The second method that I chose to attack was Twitter.  Though this one was not

as time consuming as the Yik-Yak approach, I still felt that I would try to get as many

people to see the post about the meeting as possible.  So, I enlisted the help of my friends

to retweet the tweet and get as many people to see it as possible.  In total, it got eleven

retweets and was hopefully able to reach a great deal of people with all of our combined

followers.

Another campaign that I took on solo was to create a Snapchat geofilter.  A

geofilter is essentially a Snapchat background that is available around a certain area, so I

decided to place it all around University Park.  It had the words Empower Orphans on it

with the date of the meeting, and I hoped that it would reach the thousands of Penn

Staters that use Snapchat every day.

In addition to all of this, I also helped to pass out flyers for Empower Orphans at

the HUB as well as at Redifer Dining Commons.  I felt that this would be a great way to

reach students because the HUB is a heavily trafficked area and placing the little flyer in

the hands of a student would at least force the student to read it and then consider coming

to the meeting and getting excited about Empower Orphans.  The same holds true for

Redifer.  Many students seemed to shake off the flyer like it was just another one, but

others seemed to be genuinely interested.  

The final two things that were done were to contact the deans of the various

colleges here at Penn State.  I spent nearly an hour, crafting and recrafting a lengthy

email, explaining what Empower Orphans does and what we want to do on campus.  I

asked that they consider placing the event on their listserv, but no response was received.

The second and final thing done was the hosting of the meeting itself.  There, we

explained what Empower Orphans is actually about -- raising money to help poor,

impoverished children in India as well as children here.  Overall, I believe the efforts

were well received, especially at the meeting itself.

The rhetorical purpose of persuading others to join the club, come to the meeting,

and support Empower Orphans was supported by all of the things done, especially

through the ethos of Neha Gupta.  Many people knew who she was because she received

the Children’s Nobel Peace Prize, so her name carried a great deal of weight and helped

for many people to join.

Activity Hours

Research, Discussion with Neha, discussion with UPUA Representative about marketing the club

1

Email writing, revision, sending to Deans of colleges 1

Google Doc Creation and planning with Neha, Sarah, and Olga 1

Creation of Snapchat geofilter 2

Distribution of Flyers to vendors + personal planning + discussion of Empowering Orphans with managers

1

Passing out flyers at Hub 1.5

Passing out flyers at Redifer round 1 .75

Passing out flyers at Redifer round 2 .75

Meeting with Club 1

Meeting with Josh to Prepare for big meeting 1.5

Yik Yak and Twitter Promoting .5

Discussion in Class .083

Preparation for meeting + Meeting itself 2

Total Hours 14.083

One of many Yik Yak posts.  A few of them were voted off of Yik Yak, some of them had positive number of ups, and others, like this one, had negative comments.

A Twitter post that I put up as well as encouraged a large number of my friends to retweet so that it would be more widespread.

A Snapchat filter that I made for the project to try to get in the Penn State region. Below the picture on the right, I also had to write a description of why Empowering

Orphans was relevant to this area and why it was important to me.  The reasons were over a page long.

A picture of the flyer that was both handed out in the Hub, as well as taken and asked to be hung in downtown restaurants and stores.

A screenshot of the email that I sent to Dr. Whiteman, the Dean of the Smeal College of Business.  I also sent this email to all of the other deans of the other colleges on campus.  This email was read over multiple times and edited by two different members of Empowering Orphans before it was submitted.

Fifty people came to our event where we advocated for Empower Orphans.

A picture from the meeting where we were presenting.