Money Help?

[flutem3]

Hello to one and all,

Here I am again asking for your advice. I am trying to help the pastor who is a university professor in the Philippines.

He is attempting to place his courses on the internet. The Philippines as a nation is in drastic shape right now with inflation running rampant. Professors are not paid like those here so they are short of funds like others.

Alex is attempting to keep his student up to speed so to speak with their studies. It is much less expensive for them to live at home than to find transportation to the university and/or live there. But they can get together at a kiosk (internet cafe) and share a computer for x amount of time.

We now have the domain name for five years.

We have found a reasonable place for hosting, $4.95 a month if paid for by the year, which means that he needs about $60.00 for a year of web hosting. Does anyone have any ideas of where we could get the money...does someone provide small grants, etc. If I had the money, I would take care of it myself and be glad to do it. But I don't have the money either.

I would appreciate suggestions from anybody. The place where we are going to get the webhosting is called Netfirms. If anyone has heard of it, is it a reputable company, etc?

Thanks very much for any ideas you can give me.

Maligayang Pasko and Mabuhay!

Carol

[chrisb_ebc]

Maybe a simple donate link (paypal) on the website would be reasonable. That students (since they are using the service) would be able to donate to run the website. Since they are not paying for travel. They could donate a couple bucks for the effort. that is one option. I don't know if grants are available or not. Maybe that could be something that could be googled.

A friend of mine is not Netfirms - haven't heard anything negative from him. Of course I really haven't talked to him about it either.

[flutem3]

Chris wrote:

"Maybe a simple donate link (paypal) on the website would be reasonable. That students (since they are using the service) would be able to donate to run the website. Since they are not paying for travel. They could donate a couple bucks for the effort."

Chris, thank you for your idea. In this country it would work find. However, the Philippines is about 20-25 years behind us in computer and website/internet use. Only wealthy people have accounts.

The people in the Philippines are in a bad situation. The main cause of death is TB which we haven't been concerned about for years. The life expectancy is 62, and we do not consider that old. I am 64, and I don't consider that old.
:D You better believe, I don't.

If Alex doesn't find a way to help these students whom he says are "needy," they will simply not get their education right now. And as things are nobody knows when they will. Their way out is education, and Alex knows that. We all know that which is why he is working so diligently on it. We have it good and don't even know it most of the time!!

In many situations your suggestion would be feasible. I had not thought of the possibility. I will mention it to Alex. There may be a way for them to chip in other than PayPal.

We need all the creativity and ideas we can get here. Thank you for your idea. I appreciate your taking the time to consider the question!! :)

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

What about asking Netfirms to donate the hosting, perhaps in exchange for a small link on the site?

[flutem3]

What about asking Netfirms to donate the hosting, perhaps in exchange for a small link on the site?

Hi, Jack,

That's a good idea. I will check into it.

You might be interested in knowing that a kind person is underwriting Alex's website for a year so that it can be up soon, and then he can hopefully earn enough additional money to keep it going.

If not, I will try to find another underwriter. I cannot believe this man is so concerned about his students, but he is. What a joy that there are professors in the world like him.

I was talking to a cousin of mine who is very much aware of the situation in the Philippines. She said that it was worse than what we might even imagine. That doesn't hit our newspapers often...only when there is a natural disaster. Other than times like that, many countries which desperately need help are not in the papers at all unless it is a more specialized paper.

I would not have known about the situation in the Philippines had I not been talking with Alex. Now, I talk with a couple of other people there too.

Thanks for thinking about this, Jack. I appreciate it!! And I know that Alex does as well.

Maligayang Pasko and Mabuhay!! :)

Carol

[ckvkkeek]

If this man has anybody supporting him from missions, how about asking them? Or how about asking your church to support him through its missions funds?

[flutem3]

Clarence wrote:

"If this man has anybody supporting him from missions, how about asking them? Or how about asking your church to support him through its missions funds?"

Hi, Clarence,

Under normal circumstances I might just do that. However, even though he is a pastor, he is teaching at a public university. Those are the classes to be placed on the web site in question. Therefore, I do not think it would be proper to ask the missions board for support. Maybe I am wrong about this. Right now, however, we are about to get things up and running for the next year. It will be fascinating for me to see how it works out.

By the way, I found a neat company, www.hostexcellence.com (http://www.hostexcellence.com/) which has some fine packages for web hosting.

Happy New Year and thanks for thinking about this situation. Alex would want me to say thank you as well!!

Carol

PS Why does the word, circumstances, have asteriks in it? It is not a bad word...at least if it is, I didn't ever know it before.

[David Gillaspey]

Why does the word "circumstances" have asteriks in it?Hi Carol,

I've fixed the problem now.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
Forum administrator

[flutem3]

Hi Carol,

I've fixed the problem now.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
Forum administrator


Thank you, David! :D

Carol

[ckvkkeek]

I'd still ask them. It is part of this guys ministry, right? And the worst thing they could say is no.

[flutem3]

I'd still ask them. It is part of this guys ministry, right? And the worst thing they could say is no.

You know what? You are absolutely right. He is doing a wonderful thing for these students. And nobody asked him to do it. From the end in the Philippines nobody can help him monetarily because they have no money either. It must be terrible.

This is off the subject completely, but I was just stunned when Alex said that he had never heard of flu shots. We just take them for granted. He said that if there are any, they must be for rich people. The disease which kills the greatest number of people? TB We have not had to worry about TB for years.

Anyway, I will ask the missions committee. You are right. The worst thing that can happen is their saying no...and maybe they won't. Thank's for persisting with the idea. I appreciate that. By the way, Alex is trying to get the rest of his colleagues to put their material on the web site as sub domains. Great idea, don't you think? :D

Carol

[ckvkkeek]

Thank's for persisting with the idea.

I am a natural nag that way :-) Sometimes it is hard for me to let things go....

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Carol,

How have things been going? Were you able to find some extra funding for Alex?

[flutem3]

Carol,

How have things been going? Were you able to find some extra funding for Alex?

Hi, Kyle,

Sorry I took so long. It was great that you remembered the situation. The answer is yes. I just kept writing about the situation everywhere I went. I kept thinking and praying that someone would help me with this...and somebody did.

We have Alex set up for two years which gives him time to raise money to keep it going...maybe. The situation in the Philippines is worsening by the day. Alex is doing a neat job, I think. Take a look at:

www.alsnet.org (http://www.alsnet.org/)

Right now I am trying to find a forum something like this which is free that he can put on the site for discussions with the students or so that the students can talk with each other. Alex calls it "weaving wisdom." I like that, don't you?

If anyone knows of a good free forum type place, please let me know. Thanks. I will try to answer some of the other posts before long. I have been under the weather, and the worst part is that my medicine is messed up which upsets my vision a bit too. Working on the computer is not much fun right now. But it is getting better.

Thanks so much for asking, Kyle. I meant to let everyone know, and I just plain forgot to do so. My apologies.

Carol

[chrisb_ebc]

http://www.phpbb.com/ - this is a installable forum, onto one's server - not sure if you were looking for something hosted or not. And is rather nice. Its also free.

[David Gillaspey]

Right now I am trying to find a forum something like this which is free that he can put on the site for discussions with the students or so that the students can talk with each other. Hi Carol,

This site reviews a number of open-source (= free) programs:

http://opensourcecms.com/

including forum software.

(Look for the "Forum" link in the left column, about four or five inches from the top. Click on it, to "expand" it and display the dozen or so forum software options that are reviewed by users. Each program has its fans as well as detractors. Programs such as these are typically based on the PHP programming language and rely on a mySQL database to store the data. Both of these are typically provided free with Unix web hosting.)

Included among these are phpBB, which Chris mentioned. I started with phpBB for this forum, before a kind benefactor offered to help pay for the proprietary forum software I now use, vBulletin. Along with Chris, however, I can recommend phpBB.

By the way, below the link for forum software is a link for e-learning software, which Alex might also be interested in.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

Hi, you guys,

Thank you for the information. I will send them off to Alex so he can take a look. He is not going to have a lot of time.

Is there one forum that is lots better than the rest in your opinions? That would be a good place for him to start.

I looked at the first place mentioned (the PPh whatever it was). I thought it was confusing, but I was just reading it and not actually doing it. Doing it works better.

Thanks again!!

Carol

[Faithhb_lutheran]

carol,

I know that some people really like vanilla. I have never had the need to use it put from what I hear it is very easy to maintain and is written very well so it should have less crashes. here is an article (http://www.betachurch.org/technology/archives/2006/02/standards_compl.php) on it. Hope you have some luck. Good to hear that alex got some funding.

Kyle