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Welcome to GroWing Designs! |
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We create backgrounds,
buttons, and website updates. |
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I guess I should start at the “beginning”. Just over four years ago I met a woman on the internet, named Kim. It was a purely “accidental” meeting and we may have never met if it weren’t for a few wrong clicks of the mouse button. Kim is from Winnipeg, Canada and I am, originally, from New York. The chances of us meeting if it weren’t for the internet, are very slim. In any case, over the past two years Kim and I have become extremely close and talk to each other almost every night. You’re probably wondering how a “chance” friendship could possibly lead to service, but don’t worry, I’m getting there! About two years ago I taught myself how to design and update websites using FrontPage by Microsoft. Kim gave me a few pointers about how to access the pages and how to save it, but from then on I taught myself. I basically used the “I’ll click this button and see what happens” method. I learned a lot in a few short weeks and became addicted to updating my little buddy, Malorie’s website. Malorie has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), like I do, and I had only known her about three or four months. Malorie’s mom, Michelle, was kind enough to let “first timers”, like Kim and myself, do Malorie’s website. Thus began my volunteering to do websites for children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. After becoming fairly proficient with FrontPage, I e-mailed my friend, Laura Stants. Laura lost two sons to SMA and started an organization (actually, she started two, but I’ll save that for another journal) called Our-SMA-Angels. Our-SMA-Angels is an organization that hosts websites for children with SMA. The websites are free of charge and the family has unlimited space to use for pictures, information, and anything else they wish to include. Laura had been doing the websites by herself (with families occasionally doing their own) since 1997 and, understandably, was getting backed up. I e-mailed Laura and volunteered myself, and Kim, to help her with the Our-SMA-Angels websites. Initially, Laura was hesitant to allow us to do websites because she had been doing them for so long by herself. But gradually she began to have us do the websites. Currently, Laura has had Kim and I do over twenty websites. Kim and I have also been asked to update fourteen others. Kim and I design websites from “scratch” or just revamp older ones. We do our best to get to know the children that we are doing the website for so that it will be personal. We dedicate a great deal of time to do the websites and really enjoy seeing them grow. The best part of doing websites for the children is knowing how much the families appreciate what we are doing. Over the past two years I have come to love doing websites for Our-SMA-Angels. It has become my passion, besides my organization, B4SMA, and I only wish I could devote 100% of my time to helping with the Our-SMA-Angels websites. I hope that I will be able to continue to do websites for Our-SMA-Angels for a very long time. It brings me so much joy to know that the kids love their websites! For more information on Our-SMA-Angels, visit www.our-sma-angels.com
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