Formative

Thus far in the community project we have experienced some barriers that we were not expecting. Through these barriers we have been able to make adjustments in order to move forward with the program. A barrier that we have hit is the needs assessment. The Ronald McDonald House did not approve our needs assessment that we made to hand out to the families at the house. So plan B is to meet with Karen the director to review the assessment that they have the families fill out at the end of their stay at the house. This will allow us to assess the needs of the families in order to develop a program to meet those needs.

After assessing the survey that the residents fill out, it was discovered that one thing the residents wanted more of was options of activities. We decided to do a "game day," in which the residents could play games with their families. When we presented this to the volunteer coordinator, it was suggested that we also include food with the activities. We decided to include ice cream and hot dogs to our game day.

Upon the actual implementation of the project there were some adjustments to be made as well. While we had assigned participants from our class to specific positions, it worked out that everyone helped wherever help was needed. Also, we did not end up playing charades. It worked out that everyone was outside and we played Bingo while the hot dogs provided by the house were cooked. When the Bingo game was over, everyone got their food and sat with their families to eat. After everyone was finished with their hot dogs and ice cream, they all thanked us for the game and the food, and then most of them had to go back to the hospital.
 * Deciding when to eat and when to play the games was one formative evaluation. Since it was already 1:00pm we decide that most people would be hungry right away, and that we should serve the food as soon as possible. Once we started grilling the food we realized that it would take about 15-20 minutes for everything to be ready, so this would be a good time to start the game. By the time the game was over, the food was ready, so the timing worked out well.
 * Since this was not an RSVP event, we had no idea how many people were going to attend. Because of this, we did not know how much food to prepare. We started with enough to feed the families that were there, and continued to monitor if new people came so we could add more food to the grill.
 * We also did not know the age of the children who were going to be there. We had planned on playing two games but realized that the children were not the recommended age for the game Guesstures, so decided to only play BINGO. This was also a good decision because after they played the first game and ate, many of them were on their way back to the hospital.