Jake, Shaan, and I first decided that we wanted to raise awareness to the worlds water crisis but then realized we should narrow down our topic to make it more relatable. We came to a conclusion that choosing the Flint, Michigan water problem would bring a familiar feeling to students because it is within the United States and not some country overseas that students may not even know the location of. We believed that by choosing a topic close to home, we could get students to see that these kind of things are not just problems that exist far away and therefore the students would be more likely to help people that the can relate to. We started last week by making a Twitter account because we felt that it was the best way to get through to the most people. We concluded that using Instagram would spread our cause to the most people initially but would die out quicker and become less looked at as time goes on. With Twitter we figured that with the use of the retweet button, we could get our message out not only to our followers but also to our followers followers, therefore exponentially growing the amount of people seeing what is happening in Flint. I do not feel like this worked out very well but not because of the wrong decisions by us. Our posts did not reach very many people but I believe that with more time we could have grown our account to a very decent size and at the same time growing awareness.
For the other way of spreading awareness about Flint, we decided to put up multiple posters in different Dorms. We did this so that people would not just see it once and instantly forget about it but they would see it a few times a day when going to or from their dorm room. We believe that because the students see it a few times a day they will retain the information on the posters better and may even want to look up more of the details of the crisis. I really hope that because of our posters we influenced a few students to want to help the disaster that is happening in our own country but we cannot be sure because we were not always there to see who was intrigued by the posters.
If we were able to change even one mind or even educate one student on what has happened in Flint, then I feel like this project was a success. I did not initially think that I would have much stake in this project but I feel that through my research that I have done, my eyes have been opened not only to the injustice in Flint but also to the societal flaws that is constantly separating the citizens of the United States more and more each and every day. Hopefully, starting this project will get people of all races, cultures, political parties, and ideals to get together and create a country where everyone helps each other without prejudice.