Hi everyone!
Welcome to my first Action post of my new cycle! To give everybody a background on my project, I lead a club called Miracle Movement at school. The goal of our club is to raise awareness on pediatric health. We do this by initiating campaigns and hosting small fundraisers in support of BC Children’s Hospital.
In my first action of the school year, I mentioned how my focus action value was “Good Health and Wellbeing”. To reflect on my experiences from last year, I believe my posts have represented well this value. As I’ve mentioned, “Good Health and Wellbeing” encompasses a large range of topics. Not only does it promote preventive measures and efficient healthcare for everyone, but it also highlights the importance of having a healthy lifestyle.
In the last semester, we were able to hold a variety of different events. Our main events were the bake sale and the Balloon Awareness Campaign.
Our first bake sale was a two-day event. The first half happened at the parent teacher interviews whereas rest of the event occurred during the school day after. At the parent teacher interviews, we sold baked goods, such as brownies and cookies, and coffee. Leftovers and other new items were sold the day after. Compared to our previous events, it was the most successful! Even so, when planning for our bake sale, we faced variety of different challenges. Since we were hard on time, it was difficult to successfully promote the event. As a result, it was hard to contact our target audience. Furthermore, we also had problems handling the coffee machine that we used. For example, we didn’t know fully how to work the machine and one of the urns was acting up. Fortunately, we got some help from our teacher sponsor, and we overcame this difficulty. Moreover, we ran out of baked goods to sell on our second day of the sale. Nonetheless, it is important for us to recognize these challenges and provide improvements to our future sales. Consequently, we’ll be more efficient.
One of our other events was the Balloon Awareness Campaign. Because it was an awareness campaign, we did not sell anything. This event consisted of putting up sticky notes and balloons with facts to raise recognition on pediatric health. These facts were based on data collected from online. Even so, there were both successes and challenges that we faced from this event. For example, when we reflected on this event as a club, many people said that they’ve seen people pick up the balloons and read them. Furthermore, I talked to some of my Social Responsibility classmates, and they’ve mentioned how they’ve read some of the facts on the balloons. On the other hand, there were also some challenges. Because some of the balloons fell on the walls, some members found that there weren’t many balloons around at the end of the day. Even so, Miracle Movement was conscious of our unintended consequences of having this campaign. A week after this event, we took down our sticky notes and balloons to ensure that we continue to play a role in maintaining a clean school.
During this upcoming semester, Miracle Movement will be taken into a similar direction. In other words, we’re continuing with our fundraising and awareness events. We’re currently planning on having two more bake sales and one end of the year event. For the bake sales, those events will be consisted out of selling a variety of baked goods, from brownies to cupcakes, and coffee. For the end of the year event, on the other hand, we’re planning on inviting different performers and speakers who’ve participated in this event before. Furthermore, we’re also planning on having a concession to sell baked goods and drinks. These events will be planned more thoroughly as we approach the event dates.
Our next upcoming bake sale is on March 12th from 3pm to 7pm. Although we were originally planning it to be a two-day event (March 12th and March 13th during the school day), it was unfortunately unable to happen. This is because our school event planner is already booked until mid-April. Since we are also going to attempt to hold another bake sale later in the semester, booking an event a couple months in advance will be a good idea.
To prepare for the bake sale, we’ve been having regular Thursday afterschool meetings. In our last meeting, we were able to establish who is bringing what and who can volunteer on March 12th. We also took notes on volunteer positions for the bake sale for March 13th. However, it was only determined today (Friday, February 7, 2020) that it won’t be moving forward.
In our next meeting, we were planning on making posters and writing out an announcement script. However, because our target audience aren’t principally students, this will be revaluated. If anyone has any input on this upcoming bake sale and thoughts on how to make it into a success, please comment below. It will be all greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
Alison
Hi Alison,
This is a great post. You give a lot of detail about what you have done and are planning to do.
I like that your group did both fundraising and informational events. I’m wondering if you could do something a little different than what you have done in the past. You could either do something off-site from the school, like at Coquitlam centre (to reach a broader audience) or in some classes (to give a deeper understanding of the issues).
PS. Please remember to put a picture up with your post and add it to the ‘featured image’ part of the post so that we will have more images on our home page when people come to visit the site. If you’re not sure how to do this, please come and see me.
Hi Alison! I think you have an absolutely great project! You are really getting involved in your community and contributing to the greater good of the world. People like yourself never fail to impress me. At your bake sale, you should have some sort of info paper/sign that tells people where the funds are going, similar to how we do in chapati sales. I think people feel better spending their money if they know what cause it’s going towards, especially if it’s a good one!
Terrific job!