Walk the Talk Update

My friend Sylvain Duford has been hard at work setting up a template and website for us to use. He aims, he says, to have considerable functionality in place by the end of the weekend. I certainly appreciate his efforts and applaud his enthusiasm, but hope he will also spend some time with his lovely wife on this long weekend. All work and no play can get us into trouble. To see what he has done at any given point, have a look here: Walk the Talk.

It seems that at least for the moment we will be using the title 'Walk the Talk' for the website. That can always be changed later, if we find a better name. In the meantime, at least we will be able to access the site and see what is going on. If anyone has suggestions for a site name or an URL we should attempt to register, let us know. Leave a comment here or send me an email or join our Yahoo Group or sign up at the Walk the Talk website and make suggestions there. The site presently has as the motto: 'Helping the Homeless,' but that is of course not all we wish to do. We therefore ask for suggestions for a motto that describes more fully what our thrust will be. Also, we will need a mission statement. Jen has said that she might be able to help us with that once we refine exactly what we will attempt to 'be' and how we propose to help those in need.

My friend Mark at EasyDNS has volunteered to provide DNS services and domain registration and annual fees in perpetuity, or as long as the site is operational. Thank you Mark. I will be picking your brain from time to time and I appreciate everything you are doing for us. Other regulars here like Chani and Penny have volunteered to help and several other individuals have as well. I will be sure to credit every effort. Everything, anything, anyone can do to help will be very helpful and will earn my gratitude.

One of the things that we need is for volunteers to target their home community and compile lists of services with the name, address, telephone number and URL of each and to group them by category. I could use some help with the category names. Can someone help out here? I am thinking like: homeless shelter, battered women centre, runaway shelter, crisis hot line, pregnant teen centre, etc., but someone who actually has some experience with this can probably come up with a more accurate and useful list. We will then offer every city all of the categories and gradually fill in the applicable names. If a particular city does not have a service in a particular category, the category will remain blank until we can add a service at a later date.

I will be cross-posting some of my blog posts both here and at the Yahoo group for a while to make sure that everyone can stay informed. The Yahoo Group should be the main avenue of communication for everyone involved in this project until Sylvain has the website further along and then we can use the forum provisions there.

This is a good cause folks. We need your help. Climb on. It will help people who need it, and it will make you feel good.