Mentoring is a way to help at-risks kids stay on the right path, and the Over My Shoulder Foundation was set up to raise awareness of the benefits of mentoring. The nonprofit organization has teamed up with Grammy winner Patti Austin, ADPublishing.org and XtremeSignPost, an innovative company using RFID to create personalized experiences, on a special project to promote mentoring.
Last night, as the United States celebrated the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Boston Children’s Chorus, Patti Austin, Lianna Gutierrez, and Kyle and Chris Massey held a concert in Boston to honor the great civil rights leader and promote mentoring. Donors, mentors and those being mentored who attended the event were able to upload photographs, videos, music files and text to the Internet of Experiences Web site and receive RFID-enabled postcards, known as “Bulacards,” linked to each person’s own area on that site.
The self-addressed postcards will be physically and digitally signed by Austin and the other stars, and will be collected and presented to the President of the United States. The organizers hope the cards will get the White House stamp. They will then be mailed back to the person who created the card. During the year, attendees at more than 20 events held by Patti Austin and others will also receive RFID-enabled postcards.
“Each person’s individual files will be available to the public during the duration of the project,” says Monto H. Kumagai, XtremeSignPost’s CEO and president. “The cards can be scanned by RFID readers or RFID-enabled cell phones, so people can call up the experience for their own memory, or share with a friend with a wave of the cell phone.”
“The goal of this project is to raise the awareness of the value of mentoring and education,” Kumagai says. “I hope that it will also introduce mobile, consumer-based, RFID technology to the public.”
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark’s opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or the Editor’s Note archive.