DORAN FUNDRAISER x 50 50 RAFFLE TICKETS

March 8th, 2010 | By All Day

As most of you all are aware, my cohort and I are fundraising for our trip to Washington DC for March 2011, our senior year. We recently conducted a 50/50 raffle which was held all throughout the month of February until this past Friday, March 5th. We sold 1,200 tickets at a dollar each with the intentions of keeping have of the money raised and raffling three winners with the other half, 1st place winning $300 dollars, 2nd place winning $200, and 3rd place winning $100. Congratulations to all three winners and everyone else who supported this fundraiser!

Amount Fundraised thus far: ~$1,000
Amount Need as a cohort: ~$11,000

DORAN EVENT x SAKS FIFTH AVENUE

March 1st, 2010 | By All Day

This past weekend on Saturday, my scholarship donor, Mr. and Mrs. Doran, took our entire cohort on a special event “Dress for Success” at Saks Fifth Avenue located at the Biltmore Mall in Phoenix. It was here where we had the privileged to get a tour of the store before it opens and get a behind the scene look of how it is run. We where also given tips and lectures of how to dress for success in the business world. Great advise was learned from this event, it was definitely a great event to attend. Thank you Saks. After the event, our cohort was invited for a luncheon over at California Pizza, courtesy of the Dorans. Shout out to the Dorans who make all of this possible, thank you.

PHOENIX UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT x HONOREE DINNER AND AWARDS

February 20th, 2010 | By All Day

What a night I had on Friday. I was invited to attend the Phoenix Union High School District’s Honoree Dinner and Awards at the Wyndham Hotel in Downtown Phoenix (“I’m at the “W”, but I can meet you in the lobby” — Drake). Furthermore, this dinner and awards night was amazing! There was a live band outside playing and cheerleaders setting up the mood at the entrance of the hotel, courtesy of Carl Hayden Community High School. Upon entering the reserved room, North High School’s Orchestra was playing beautiful classy music. Meanwhile at this time, there was a cocktail party and a live viewing of items going up for auction which high school students had created, such as paintings, sculptures, photographs, cakes, etc. I actually did bid on a couple of things, a fantastic painting of Obama, King, and Chavez and a strawberry cake; unfortunately, I did not win either. The food at this place was amazing! We had a three course meal, with the main dish being shrimp and chicken with smashed potatoes and vegetables.

Art Hamilton gave a speech, within his speech he said something that caught my attention, “the cost of education is high, but the cost of ignorance is even higher.” I find this to be fairly true and I am glad he brought it up. My favorite part of the presentational awards was when Mr. Wayne and Mrs. Maureen Doran were called up to the podium. (As most of you might recall, Mr. and Mrs. Doran play an enormous roll in my life, I see them as close family members. They also assist funding my academics at Arizona State University, the Doran Community Scholarship Program. God bless them both, they are amazing and generous people.) The Dorans where presented with the 2010 Friends of Phoenix Union Honoree Award. Mr. Doran gave a fantastic speech where he summed up “building a foundation for student’s success.”

Once again, I am extremely thankful I was given the opportunity to attend this event, but most importantly, congratulations to Art Hamilton for being an inductee of the 2010 Alumni Hall of Fame and Wayne and Maureen Doran for being announced the 2010’s Friends of Phoenix Union Honoree Award. Both parties have without a doubt played a huge role and impacted the lives of many students with all dedication for education and contributions.

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY OUTSIDE

January 23rd, 2010 | By All Day

Off to my soccer game.. we are currently standing in 4th ranking position.

FALL ‘09 SEMESTER FINALLY OVER!

December 21st, 2009 | By All Day

Wow! What a great academic year! I can definitely say I learned an enormous amount of new material and I am able to apply these new teachings into the ‘real world’. I had awesome Professors who bared with me the entire time via email, office hours, and during class, when I could not manage to comprehend material. I put forward a huge amount of commitment and dedication; all those late night studying and not going out on weekends definitely paid off! My sincerest appreciations to everyone who supported me this semester, mentally, financially, and emotionally. Most importantly, thank you to the Dorans, Alicia, and Robby, who always guide me towards the right path in a higher level of education. Looking forward toward Spring semester ‘10 … but even earlier than that, I will be taking one winter class at ASU, class begins on the 29th.

CRISIS NURSERY x DORAN SCHOLARS

December 12th, 2009 | By All Day

First off, I want to apologize for not posting as soon as each event occurs. I have been under extreme pressure and well over occupied. On another note, this past Saturday, my cohort and I, had our annual Christmas Party for the foster care children at the Crisis Nursery. I was definitely amazed with the amount of toys we were able to collect to give to the children. Our initial goal was to fundraise 100 toys, however, with dedication and hard work we were able to over achieve our initial goal and collect 173 toys. At this Christmas Party there was food (tamales, tacos, cake, cookies, donuts, drinks, etc), live dj, several booths with fun activities, and of course, we also invited our special guest from all the way in the North Pole, Santa! It was truly a sense of joy seeing the faces of each child open up a gift and sitting on Santa’s lap. I am thrilled with excited just knowing I played a huge part of this event along with my cohort, Doran Scholars.

“THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA”

December 7th, 2009 | By All Day

I was finally able to upload some of the photos taken at our yearly Doran cohort event. This year we attended “The Phantom of the Opera”, which was a phenomenal opera play. The staging and actors were amazing! My favorite parts was when the one-ton chandelier was lowered from the stage. That chandelier was huge, had a golden color to it, with plenty of bright lights. I also enjoyed when the stage was made into an underground river and the Phantom and Cristina were in a canoe maneuvering through it.

FUNDRAISER x DORAN EVENT

December 3rd, 2009 | By All Day

And once again, my cohort and I had another fundraiser event for the means up fundraising money for our Washington DC trip our senior year. This week’s fundraiser was hosted at Apple-Bee’s. I was the last member our cohort to be at Apple-Bee’s during the evening shift. Gladly while I was there, I took advantaged of my 2 for $20 meal Apple-Bee’s advertises all the time on their commercials.

PANDA EXPRESS x FUNDRAISER

November 18th, 2009 | By All Day

First off, I want to thank everyone who came out to our fundraiser event to support. I know I definitely ate a lot that day; half chow main, half rice, plus three entrees, two egg rolls and a raspberry tea, yeah boy! You already know, I had a good time.

For the first couple of hours of the event I was outside Panda Express with two members of my cohort, Freddy and O.B. We were ’secretly’ handing out the Doran flyers to customers. The flyer was needed to be given to the cashier upon purchase of food in order for us to receive our 20% funding. Which was totally against our contract with Panda; customers needed to have had the flyer prior to coming to the Panda and not handed out by the doors. However, I see it this way, we had to get our money in; hustle and grind or else no Washington DC trip, right? Overall, we all had a great time. We all ate and were laughing most of the time, having an awesome time bonding. At the moment we do not know how much money we earned from this event, therefore our balance for our trip remains the same.

Balance Needed: $11,614

DORAN x YARD SALE FUNDRAISER

November 14th, 2009 | By All Day

This morning my cohort and I conducted a yard sale for the means of fundraising money for our Washington DC trip. Beautiful day today, a tad cloudy outside and chilly; we had hot chocolate and bizcochos (buttery flaky pastry, cookies) for sale as well. We had such a great time, most of the time we were doing something silly and laughing about it. For instance, we found a wig, some fairy wings, and a couple of guitar hero’s guitars in the pile of items we were selling. We all decided it would be a good idea if we took turns wearing the wig and holding up the guitar, pretending to be rockers.

Also, let me tell you, unfortunately, I missed breakfast this morning. However, luckily to my surprise, this lady out of now where came to my rescue selling tamales. You already know, of course I had to purchase a couple… they were delicious. In the mist of it all, we managed to sell $84 dollars worth of items today.

Balance Needed: $11,614

DORAN SCHOLARS x FUNDRAISER

November 10th, 2009 | By All Day

If you are around the area, stop by and support my cohort and I on Tuesday, November 17th. We will be having a percentage night at Panda Express, located on the North-East corner of University and College Ave in Tempe, Az. Once again, we are raising money for our senior trip to Washington D.C.

DINNER x DORAN SCHOLARS

November 4th, 2009 | By All Day

Since the Dorans are in town, they decided to take us all out for dinner. The dinner was conducted this past Sunday in Tempe. We all shared with the Dorans current volounter events we have conducted this semester, our academic standing, and how we are doing overall in life.

Should I mention they literally shut down half of the restaurant for us, vip status! Nothing unusual though, they have shut down Zac’s for an entire morning on a Saturday for us before. FYI, Zac’s is an ‘expensive’ store inside of the Baltimore Mall in Phoenix, Arizona. Yeah, I guess you can call the Dorans “ballers”, lol.
In the mist of it all, like the Dorans tell us, now a days it is all about networking and education. The Dorans are extremely well known. They have so many connections everywhere, you would be surprised of the people they are friends with. I am truly blessed for being part of the Doran Community Scholarship Program.

DORAN SCHOLARS x CAR WASH

October 28th, 2009 | By All Day

This past Saturday, my scholarly cohort, the Doran Scholars conducted a ‘donation car wash’ at the AutoZone on 44th ave and McDowell. Our goal at the car wash was to raise the most money possible to eventually complete our main goal, raise $12,000 for our senior trip to Washington DC; currently we all are juniors. We need to have the full amount of money raised by February of 2011. We are glad to say, our car wash was very successful. Quick shout outs to my boys Teddy, Dizzy, Fresh, Spyda, and Sisko, who came thru within the last hour of our car wash to support us and help us wash vehicles.

Current balanced needed for our trip: $11,698