featsoftweet.com

So the first week of Feats Of Tweet worked out ok – there’s room for more support and more re-tweets, but hey. Plenty of people got involved and after our first vote, we have our first feat.

Feats Of Tweets has 30 days from today to make this feat a reality. Somewhere on Twitter is the right individual, or the right combination of individuals, to make this happen – our job is to find them over the next month. Here’s the first feat we are supporting, as voted for by the Twitter community:

@RachelSMorris

@FeatsOfTweet I want to take my special needs foster son to Oregon for Christmas, to see best friends. help with cheap fares anything. #feat

M is 17 years old and has lived with me for over 9 years. He has global learning difficulties and is on the autistic spectrum. When he came to me he had minimal communication, was malnourished and didn’t know how to play. He can now hold conversations, travel to college independently, is obsessed with vehicles and has a reading age of approximately 6 years. He has no understanding of numbers or money and is unlikely to be able to live independently.

Some years ago my husband left and has had only sporadic contact with M since, depriving him of a good male role model. Some time ago he met some friends of mine from Albany in Oregon, and really bonded with my friend’s husband who is a mechanic. Blayne provided that much needed role model and M adores him. As M reaches 18 and has decisions to make about his future he would really benefit from spending time with Blayne.

Rachel has been in touch to say because of school and college timetables, the flights would need to be outbound after 19th December to return by 2nd January at the latest. Rachel lives in Bognor Regis, which means flights from London shouldn’t be a problem. It’s not massively cheap, however – two return flights from London to Portland cost from £1,300.

I know this is a tall order. It’s our first attempt at this and we’re not a huge community yet. It’s not impossible though. In fact it’s better to assume we’ll manage it regardless, and we just need to work on the fine detail. Some initial thoughts from me:

- there are dozens of airlines involved in indirectly serving the London to Portland route. Do we find all those that have Twitter accounts and bombard them with links to this story? Do we pick one and concentrate our efforts on them? Is there anybody you know personally that works at one of the airlines?

- do we break up the challenge into more manageable chunks? Should we concentrate on sourcing flights to a major US airport first, and then worry about cheaper internal flights later?

- do you have more Air Miles than you know what to do with? Would you be willing to donate them if somebody else paid for the cash element of the tickets?

Remember, there are no rules to say support must be sourced through Twitter; if you know people through flesh-and-blood connections, then by all means get in touch with them.

What do you think? It’s our first feat – can we make it happen for Rachel and her son?