Gathering Technology and Community Impact
Our kids have broken off into their small groups for the day. Some are heading to the French Quarter while others are interacting in the ‘interaction center’. I’m sitting at a Starbucks in the midst of all the organized chaos blogging! I want this post to be more about the Gathering as a whole instead of just our group. Technology has been playing a really cool role in this year’s Gathering. There are TV screens up everywhere in the convention center that are scrolling pictures of people’s groups that they email to a specific address. The screens are also scrolling live twitter updates from the Gathering. Twitterers are typing #JJJ09 in their tweets which allows twitter to search for tweets related to the Gathering. Scott Post explains this phenomenon on his blog. Here is a live twitterfeed of these tweets!
(more after the jump)
You can read the official recap of Day One by clicking here. Each day 1/3 of the entire 38,000 people participating in #JJJ09 are being shipped out into the New Orleans communities to do servant activities.
2009 ELCA Youth Gathering ServantLife experiences in New Orleans will work with and impact:
- 82 schools
- Every K-3rd grade student in New Orleans will receive a school supply kit
- 13 churches
- 11 organizations building homes
- 7 public parks
- 21 community centers
- 2 major public events
- 5 reading fairs
- 12,000 Gathering servants per day for 3 days
- 360 young adult volunteers per day
- 300 buses per day
That is so cool! Our group is going to be headed out early Saturday (tomorrow) morning to paint some houses in the New Orleans community. I, however, will be flying home tomorrow because friends of mine are getting married on Saturday afternoon. I will continue to blog about the Gathering from Naperville… but it will be more second-hand via phone conversations with our leaders who are still with the kids.
More information about what we did today will be posted tonight!
Here is a slide show of all the pictures I’ve taken so far:
