Venture “with your heart & talent” for the community needs ~ ACF Venture Sketch Team 🎨 💻

Who we are

We are a group of incoming high school freshmen who enjoy coding and art. We created VentureSketch because we love to create new things in our spare time. Additionally, we want to help others through art. Art is often overlooked and under appreciated, when in reality, it is important to society and enriches everyday life. It provides a way for people to express themselves through meaningful expression, creativity, and culture. It also makes people happy — both the artists, and the viewers. VentureSketch helps out nonprofits with advertisements and gives digital artists a way to express their talents, and to create for others.

The Problem

Nonprofit organizations play a key role in building healthy communities. However, they don’t receive much support from the government and because of this, nonprofit organizations lack the time and resources to create artwork for logos or other means of marketing. After talking to people who work in this field, we have learned that these organizations have turned down offers to be featured in magazines, blog posts, and similar opportunities due to these issues. There are also many up-and-coming artists who have been struggling and looking for ways to make their names well-known. VentureSketch helps solve this problem.

Solution to the problem

VentureSketch is a website that will connect the artists to many different nonprofit organizations. Our website allows the artists to execute their creativity into many different organizations that may need help with logos or promotion posters, etc. Using VentureSketch, nonprofits can send out artwork requests with their criteria, which the artists can fulfill by creating artwork. Multiple artists can apply for a single art request, and whichever artwork the nonprofit organizers find best will be used. An art gallery, which is a future feature we are working on, will display all artists’ work. This feature will help artists a lot because NPOs will be able to see their artwork contact them for commission offers.

Challenges

When it comes to coding and developing a website as a team, there are a lot of hurdles we have to overcome. In the beginning, we all had different ideas of what this project could be. Since we were unable to meet in person, it was especially difficult to communicate our ideas to the rest of the team. Being fairly new to coding, there were also a lot of concepts that were hard to understand and implement. However, we continue to solve these problems as a team and challenge ourselves.

Future Plans

We have been brainstorming several more features for our website. A feature we have been considering is a workspace that offers tools for artists to create their artwork with. For example, an emoji making tool, with which users will be able to combine several parts of an emoji to create a unique one. As mentioned, an online art gallery that can display artists’ work is also in the works. If an artist displays their artwork, other users can interact with it and the artist. Not only can the artists share their artworks, but they will also be able to join competitions that will be fundraisers. To join the competitions, artists will pay a small fee, and winners can earn prizes. We are planning for the proceeds from such events to go to the non-profits that we partner with. Lastly, we plan to offer premium features for companies and artists. Currently, all the functions and features are available to any users. However, as we develop our website, we may allow the users to use advanced tools or items by paying or watching ads.

Our First Time Meeting Each Other in Person

On Saturday, July 24, the VentureSketch team met in person for the first time. We went to the Cimino Care Senior Center to put up artwork and talk to one of our advisers, Ms. Annamarie Buonocore, and her colleagues. After presenting our project to them and putting up the art, we went to a boba shop to drink tea and chat with each other.

Reflections

Christine: I really enjoyed meeting other team members in person and visiting the senior center today. Our team met Ami and Annamarie there, gave a small presentation, had an interview with them, and donated some artworks. The experiences that we had today were very useful in many ways, such as increasing awareness of our team and experiencing new things, and I think we can improve more and be more familiar with visiting other places. I hope we all meet in person again and also visit other places soon.

Lian: The trip to the senior center was very fun and also useful. I enjoyed meeting everyone in person, and Annamarie and Ami were very welcoming and gracious. They asked lots of thoughtful questions, and gave us useful advice. I’m glad that they allowed us to visit, and it made our project feel so much more official. The visit went better than I expected, but I feel like we should prepare the presentation more, as we didn’t know who was presenting what.

Jinny: Overall, It was really nice to have visited the senior center. I enjoyed meeting with Annamarie, Ami and the rest of the team. It was cool because I noticed that our project grew a lot since we started the season. They were all really welcoming and I really appreciated the positive feedback. I feel like now that we have heard a lot of feedback from Ami and Annamarie, we can improve in such things.

Smera: I enjoyed visiting the senior center. It was cool to meet everyone in person for the first time. Annamarie and Ami were very welcoming. It was interesting to see their response to our artwork and our project. After going to the senior center, we also went to a boba place, where we chatted and enjoyed drinks. I look forward to hearing the senior center’s staff’s feedback.