What's Needed
Automotive Tools
For Viper Auto to effectively be able to teach students while providing a hands-on experience requires tools. These tools however do come with a price and therefore need to be funded. So VT Auto is asking for help from anyone who is able to donate or help fund for tools that the program needs. Below are the tools that we know we need. But there are many other tools that would also be very appretiatied.
The Shop
The second thing that is necessary for students to be able to have a hands-on experience when it comes to automotive repair is a shop. We have made plans for the shop that we would like to build. We have been able to make it as cost-efficient as possible by splitting the building with the school. But, at the same time, we still need the funds to pay for our part of the build.
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What we're doing
Starting the new program is a very challenging and time-consuming process. We have come up with ways to plan out our developing process. The sections we have created are fundraising, marketing and advertising, students' curriculum, and involvement.
This year, we want to repair a motor Go-Kart to have a fresh, entertaining, and engaging learning experience. We also want to get it operating so that we can complete an exciting project and, ideally, find a buyer.
We also are in the middle of working on Iteration 1 of our Automotive Garage, to be known as "The Viper Pit"! We may keep working on the name. We worked with Administration and Mr. Hoag to name a space on campus we can call our own. We purchased this carport, and worked to remove fencing in order to weld this structure to the building. It is on a ramp section so we can pull cars up to it when we want to work on them. It is also nicely located by the Forge for easy tool access and it is highly visible to all the students! We're working on fencing it in so that it can named and used solely for our needs.
Fundraising
Fundraising is a very important part of our project. For the program to really work well, we need to have tools and a location for the students to be able to work with their hands. For this to happen we need to have a lot of funding. This funding only comes from donations. Therefore we have to host events to find possible donors. Below are just a few of the ways we have tried and things we have done to get funding.
Advertising
Getting our name out in the community is very important. We need to have people see and recognize us so we can make those useful connections. When we connect with the community we open doors to new learning, opportunities, and support for the group members. We mostly do this at the same time we get sponsors, but by simply using businesses to advise us on our projects we are able to make connections with them.
We did our advertising and finding sponsorships in two steps. First, we had to create the material we needed in order to easily display to the community who we are. We have gone to many places around the community, working to connect with businesses, so we could find the best way to work with them to enhance the experience of future students and get funding to make the program work.
Teaching students
One of the biggest goals of our program is for students to be able to gain knowledge about automotive repair to make more knowledgeable members of our community. This means that we need to be able to teach the students or community about automotive repair.
Building student interest/ including future Group members
For the program that we are creating to be able to stay strong after we leave we need to build up the students that should be in the class. This means that we need to find the students that would like to be part of this class and introduce other students to the idea of the group so they can decide if they maight be interested. When we have found students that are interested we need to keep them in the group this means they should be included in what we are doing so they can be part of the program now.
We have worked hard to display to the students what we are doing and what program we are making. We then have started finding some of the students that are interested in the group. We used a video as pictured above to help the students understand what we were doing. Now that we know some of the students that would be interested in the program we are able to include them in the future events that we hold.
Creating a class structure
When we have every thing ready for the class to run the class will need some basic idea so that it can be structured and so the students can get the most out of the class as possible. Making the structure for the class is very important in making the actual class effective and usable.
We have made a curriculum for the program to make sure the students are actually learning something. With this, we are able to build the rest of the class structure. There is a lot more work that needs to be done to make sure that the class workers really well.