Summer plans and dreams
| By Patricia Komoda - Jun 16, 2012 1:35:31 AM ET |
| Also listed in: Students for PIH | UO Students for Global Health |
I might as well introduce myself first, since this is my first post. I am an undergraduate at the University of Oregon, and a member/director of finance and campus outreach of the Students for Global Health group. I want to be a medical translator, and am currently learning Mandarin Chinese. I want to learn minority languages as well.
Overall, over the summer, I'll be focusing on learning about global health issues by reading books, journals, and articles. My radio will become my best friend, and so will the SGH Facebook group - I'll be sharing information on there and talk with everyone. I will also brainstorm (and hopefully begin preparations for, if all the directors communicate often) some fundraising ideas.
Fundraising:
We didn't reach our fundraising goal of $3,000 for the Nyamirama Health Center, (only reaching around $2k). Perhaps we relied too much on the benefit concert at the end of the year. I want to avoid making that mistake again, and supplement the big money events with smaller, but frequent ones in order to not only get a flow, but to try out different ideas. This will require some strict planning. But, if reaching these goals is truly important to us, then we need to change what we're doing wrong, or adjust our goal. Personally, I have this optimism that says we can raise more than 3k, even with us being college students. Not sure what we all would think the goal should be, though.
Anyway, I don't want to just have fundraising events like baked sales and garage sales. Those have their place. But, I want to teach as well. Not only will it benefit the community, it will also benefit the members and the people who are affected by PiH's next big project. So I need to brainstorm more ideas that fit well with our campus and the resources we have. Even so, I'm interested in experimentation, whether it educates people or not.
So far, here are my ideas. These ideas have never been done before in our group.
1. Coffee break. A lot of people here on campus are CRAZY about coffee. It's kinda creepy how that is, actually. There's two visions that I have for this path to go. One is that we sell coffee in the mornings to people passing by the EMU (a building that's central to campus - a lot of people walk by it every day). The other is that we have a room set-up where people can come by and buy coffee and socialize a bit. Maybe we could even sell coffee there. Then we could show a documentary (probably "Black Gold" http://blackgoldmovie.com/). Problems with the first idea is whether or not people will actually buy enough coffee to offset the cost of coffee+preparing it (supplies). If we time this right, however, we would probably be able to do this. I also want to use fair-trade coffee. For the second vision, this will require us to buy a screening license. We need to know the screening date for that. Either way, we'll be making coffee for people.
Website (with trailer): http://blackgoldmovie.com/
First part of that documentary (Youtube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0gD-JGbs3o&feature=related
2. Halloween fest. We could provide a safe space for parents and their children to celebrate Halloween! There will be costume contests, music (live or not) games, face painting, candy (of course). We would probably have to use student volunteers to help out with all of this. A good venue could be the EMU. Admission cost is what I'm thinking of so far as something to generate money. Problems with this is providing safety for everybody involved, getting all the supplies we need while not going over-budget, organizing volunteers, and set-up/clean-up. Also, we'll probably be planning most of it during fall term, so I'm nervous about lack of time to have everything set. But, I see the potential for getting involved with the community and with other groups that would help keep costs down (possibly helping because it's part of their mission). It also sounds like a lot of fun. :]
3. Radio call-in donations. To be honest, I'm still not sure how this works. I need more information to really evaluate this.
4. Setting up an account for SGH alumni to donate money to. Our founder, who ate brunch with us a few weeks ago, thought that this was a good idea. I need to learn more about how to set this up though.
That's what I have so far.
Educating myself:
I put together a list of books that have caught my eye. But not only am I going to be reading these on my own, I'll be sharing the list with other members in my group so we can all share what we learn with each other. It's probably not possible for one of us to read ALL of the books (although we can try), so dividing up the task seems fair. I'll put the list of books up in another blog post after I send out the emails to the people that were interested.
Also, there's something more personal that I've been working on. I need a vision for what I want the world to be like. All I have to do is finish this sentence: "My vision for a better world is..."
For some reason, I have a hard time answering this. I'll talk more about this in another blog post (probably when I find my answer), but it feels overwhelming to even begin to think of a comprehensive vision. Should I be broad, or should I be specific? The white space is daunting...
Signing out for the night. I think I caught a cold. A good omen for the beginning of my summer break? Already thinking about health!
-Patsy
Overall, over the summer, I'll be focusing on learning about global health issues by reading books, journals, and articles. My radio will become my best friend, and so will the SGH Facebook group - I'll be sharing information on there and talk with everyone. I will also brainstorm (and hopefully begin preparations for, if all the directors communicate often) some fundraising ideas.
Fundraising:
We didn't reach our fundraising goal of $3,000 for the Nyamirama Health Center, (only reaching around $2k). Perhaps we relied too much on the benefit concert at the end of the year. I want to avoid making that mistake again, and supplement the big money events with smaller, but frequent ones in order to not only get a flow, but to try out different ideas. This will require some strict planning. But, if reaching these goals is truly important to us, then we need to change what we're doing wrong, or adjust our goal. Personally, I have this optimism that says we can raise more than 3k, even with us being college students. Not sure what we all would think the goal should be, though.
Anyway, I don't want to just have fundraising events like baked sales and garage sales. Those have their place. But, I want to teach as well. Not only will it benefit the community, it will also benefit the members and the people who are affected by PiH's next big project. So I need to brainstorm more ideas that fit well with our campus and the resources we have. Even so, I'm interested in experimentation, whether it educates people or not.
So far, here are my ideas. These ideas have never been done before in our group.
1. Coffee break. A lot of people here on campus are CRAZY about coffee. It's kinda creepy how that is, actually. There's two visions that I have for this path to go. One is that we sell coffee in the mornings to people passing by the EMU (a building that's central to campus - a lot of people walk by it every day). The other is that we have a room set-up where people can come by and buy coffee and socialize a bit. Maybe we could even sell coffee there. Then we could show a documentary (probably "Black Gold" http://blackgoldmovie.com/). Problems with the first idea is whether or not people will actually buy enough coffee to offset the cost of coffee+preparing it (supplies). If we time this right, however, we would probably be able to do this. I also want to use fair-trade coffee. For the second vision, this will require us to buy a screening license. We need to know the screening date for that. Either way, we'll be making coffee for people.
Website (with trailer): http://blackgoldmovie.com/
First part of that documentary (Youtube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0gD-JGbs3o&feature=related
2. Halloween fest. We could provide a safe space for parents and their children to celebrate Halloween! There will be costume contests, music (live or not) games, face painting, candy (of course). We would probably have to use student volunteers to help out with all of this. A good venue could be the EMU. Admission cost is what I'm thinking of so far as something to generate money. Problems with this is providing safety for everybody involved, getting all the supplies we need while not going over-budget, organizing volunteers, and set-up/clean-up. Also, we'll probably be planning most of it during fall term, so I'm nervous about lack of time to have everything set. But, I see the potential for getting involved with the community and with other groups that would help keep costs down (possibly helping because it's part of their mission). It also sounds like a lot of fun. :]
3. Radio call-in donations. To be honest, I'm still not sure how this works. I need more information to really evaluate this.
4. Setting up an account for SGH alumni to donate money to. Our founder, who ate brunch with us a few weeks ago, thought that this was a good idea. I need to learn more about how to set this up though.
That's what I have so far.
Educating myself:
I put together a list of books that have caught my eye. But not only am I going to be reading these on my own, I'll be sharing the list with other members in my group so we can all share what we learn with each other. It's probably not possible for one of us to read ALL of the books (although we can try), so dividing up the task seems fair. I'll put the list of books up in another blog post after I send out the emails to the people that were interested.
Also, there's something more personal that I've been working on. I need a vision for what I want the world to be like. All I have to do is finish this sentence: "My vision for a better world is..."
For some reason, I have a hard time answering this. I'll talk more about this in another blog post (probably when I find my answer), but it feels overwhelming to even begin to think of a comprehensive vision. Should I be broad, or should I be specific? The white space is daunting...
Signing out for the night. I think I caught a cold. A good omen for the beginning of my summer break? Already thinking about health!
-Patsy
Comments are closed for this post.
Did you ever define your vision/mission?