[dba-VB] Call for development assistance

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Mar 23 09:19:22 CDT 2010


Guys,

Please bear with me for just a bit of explanation.

Because my daughter has a genetic problem which causes her a variety of medical issues, I have 
become involved in an organization that is training my wife and I to be advocates for people with 
disabilities.  The organization is called Partners in Policymaking (PIP) and their intent is to 
train individuals with disabilities, or caretakers for people with disabilities to be effective 
advocates.

First of all anyone (in the US) who has a disability or is a caretaker, I highly recommend the 
following site as it provides a ton of links to other sites for specific issues.

http://www.partnersinpolicymaking.com/

For my state the link is:

http://www.ncpartnersinpolicymaking.com/index.html

PIP is a national organization but each state has their own organization to provide training in that 
state.  PIP provides a series of about 9 monthly trainings (16 hours, once a month) on a variety of 
issues.  Each participant (me) has to do a project.

While PIP has a web site and stuff, what they do not have (or I haven't found) is an effective 
system for allowing every PIP graduate from every state to find each other and communicate.  For my 
project I have decided to try to leverage my technical abilities (and contacts!) to try and build a 
system for coordinating the graduates.

What I want to do is build a web site.  BUT I do not do web sites!  But it really needs to be a web 
site.  Sigh.

So (THE PURPOSE OF THIS EMAIL) I am putting out a call for anyone who wants to get involved with a 
good cause and knows anything at all about building a web site (in .Net).  I am going to be involved 
in this.  I am going to learn everything I can about every phase of this, but I need help.

I expect to have a fairly large database of contact information, including email addresses.  I 
expect eventually to broaden the base to anyone with a stake, people with or caretakers of people 
with a disability.

Eventually I would like to build a system similar to one belonging to:

http://consumer-action.org/

This organization collects email addresses for consumers who want to affect legislation.  Someone at 
consumer-action.org then monitors legislation before congress and emails us consumers when 
legislation is about to be voted on.  More importantly it provides a way, through their web site, to 
SEND EMAIL to MY legislators (based on my zip code).

Way cool, way easy to send the email to my legislator.

I want to do that for disability rights legislation.  I need help.

Anyone interested in helping please raise your hand, get with me, and let's make this thing happen.

Thanks,

-- 
John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com



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