Today Drew, Jaime and I went to the garden to talk to some of the volunteers. My perspective on our project changed after talking to Joe, who is one of the most dedicated volunteers of the garden. We discussed our class project and our mission to make a volunteer handbook. Joe's response was that he didn't think a volunteer handbook is necessary in a project like the community garden. His belief is that community gardening is focused around working out problems as a team effort and spreading knowledge by word of mouth and hands on instruction. For a moment, this made me feel like a handbook wouldn't be a necessary project. Then I re-thought the layout of our project to focus on the community aspect of gardening. This idea can be reinforced in the handbook's text and shown in photos/clip art throughout the booklet (ex.people gardening together).
After going to the garden, we met with Shari and discussed our proposal. Rather than a handbook for volunteers, Shari and Andrea decided that they are in more of a need for a brouche. The brochure will be slightly more general, for those who are interested in the garden. Information we put in the brochure will be overviews of topics covered in our fact sheets, (and the fact sheets will be detailed descriptions of topics taken from the brochure). They are stressing information about Also, these documents need to be on the website, first and foremost. Andrea and Shari aren't as concerned about having paper copies as they are about having the information on the web site. This also slightly changes the direction of our project. We need to think about the layout of the brochure and fact sheets in terms of the one dimensional space provided by a website.
