Unite 4 Life's Teen Depression and Suicide Prevention Classroom PowerPoint Presentation

Question 1: The Before: What was the challenge, issue or problem your organization was facing? Or, what was the opportunity you were not able to take advantage of before you put a technology solution in place?; Answer: Unite 4 Life delivers 3-day suicide prevention presentations to middle and high school classes. Our classroom presentations were originally done on whiteboards by writing out information, important points, or responses from the middle and high school students. This was time consuming and put constraints on how much time was spent delivering the life saving information to the students and actually building rapport with the students. The presentation was not as engaging as it should have been because it lacked visual appeal.

Question 2: What Microsoft software have you used/are you using in your organization to more effectively engage your beneficiaries, donors and/or volunteers and/or to make a difference in your community?; Answer: Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 (Includes any of the following: Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, OneNote, Outlook, and Word); Other:

Question 3: The After: How have these Microsoft products allowed you to engage your stakeholders more efficiently or effectively to make a difference in your community?; Answer: Unite 4 Life was able to create a PowerPoint presentation of all the important facts and information necessary to bring awareness and open communication about teen depression and suicide prevention to the students in a format that was exciting and interesting to this visual and tech savvy generation. Being able to present the information this way saves precious time and is more effective. We spend more time engaging the students in open communication which allows for building trust and empowering them with the information to help save a life from suicide. Adding the visual component also increased the students' retention of the information following each day of the presentation.

Question 4: What about these products (the features or the way you used them) made them particularly helpful in enabling your organization to expand and improve upon its community impact?; Answer: Microsoft PowerPoint is a very user friendly program. Being able to open a slide and pick background color schemes and graphics is very easy; and also being able to import photos and other clip-art adds personality to the presentation. Being a small nonprofit with only two employees we need to be able to maximize our time and resources and using the Microsoft Office package of software certainly aids us in that.

Question 5: Please provide any examples, stories or data that illustrate the difference the use of Microsoft software has enabled you to make (i.e., # of new clients reached, new program added, increased dollars raised, increased volunteers, etc.; Answer: We originally did our classroom presentations on whiteboards. Having to write out all the information meant that we had our backs to the students during a large part of the presentation. Being able to face the students and talk to them while the presentation is on the screen really enables us to open up communication with the teens. The visual presentation keeps their attention and we noticed that at presentations using the PowerPoint program the students were much more interactive with the speaker. They answered questions and offered ideas during the presentation whereas in the past it was much harder to encourage the teens to participate. Having the students more focused on the presentation brings more awareness to the epidemic of teen depression and suicide.

Upload photos or other supporting works/files: Unite 4 Life - Classroom Presentation.ppt

Microsoft Technology For Good Contest