This past weekend, I spent time reflecting on my thesis project and the DCT Pratham fundraiser. I realized that I was overextending myself and it was too big to be successfully organized in time for my thesis deadlines. When I thought back to all our earlier conversations, I realized that I had essentially been letting my mentor make the major decisions of how many tickets to sell and that she was the one suggesting that I do all these other things like the door prizes/raffle, finding a business to sponsor the reception, etc. I really hadn't thought about how much of a time commitment this was going to be, and once I did, I realized that it simply wasn't feasible. And I stopped to think about how many other things I had going on this and next month - UIL competitions, scholarship/financial aid applications, etc. - and I realized that thinking I'd be able to organize an entire fundraiser on top of all of that was rather ridiculous on my part.
The other main problem was with ticket selling - we had 125 tickets to sell, and I didn't hear back from the Pratham Kids Club at all (or anyone else on the Pratham mailing list, for that matter), so I was really nervous about whether we would be able to sell all of them in time. This fundraiser could really only come together with a group effort and I simply didn't feel comfortable continuing with this project without the support. Add that to the fact that there was minimal interest in the event itself - not many of the people I heard from said that they would be available on that date, so I really would have a hard time selling all those tickets. And the other thing is, if we decreased the number of tickets to make the event smaller and more manageable - to say, 50 tickets - we would be giving up a lot of opportunity to raise more money. I calculated that with 50 tickets, we'd only be raising a net total of $500, which in all honesty is next to nothing. The expenses of organizing this event (paying for tickets, room rental, food/drinks at the reception) would far outweigh the amount of money we could possibly raise.
Moreover, the actual buying the tickets from the DCT ended up being another obstacle to the whole event; when my parents found out that we would have to pay in advance to get the tickets, they did not feel comfortable allowing me to continue with the project. The paying-in-advance thing is pretty sketchy, to be honest, because what if I don't sell all the tickets? I'll be paying money out of my own pocket to support this fundraising event, and that is not what a fundraiser is about. That's not what it's meant to be.
So as a whole, this DCT event just wasn't working out. I spent much of today's thesis period writing these reasons out in a document and calling my mentor to explain all of this and discuss our next steps.
Like I told her during our phone conversation today, I came up with an alternative idea almost immediately, something that would be far more convenient for my thesis project - a 25 page paper explaining the problem of child illiteracy in India and the need for child education initiatives, and relating a more personal account of my own experiences working with Pratham through the summer and into the school year as part of the Readathon effort. This works way better for me, because I can write this paper on my own time; the responsibility is all on me, and there are no extraneous factors that I have to worry about to ensure they don't get in the way of me completing my thesis in time. In fact, I already have a few ideas in mind for what I want to include in the paper and how I want to go about structuring it, so over the next few class periods I'm going to sketch out the entire outline and make sure that I have everything I need - that way, writing the actual paper will be much easier.
The other main problem was with ticket selling - we had 125 tickets to sell, and I didn't hear back from the Pratham Kids Club at all (or anyone else on the Pratham mailing list, for that matter), so I was really nervous about whether we would be able to sell all of them in time. This fundraiser could really only come together with a group effort and I simply didn't feel comfortable continuing with this project without the support. Add that to the fact that there was minimal interest in the event itself - not many of the people I heard from said that they would be available on that date, so I really would have a hard time selling all those tickets. And the other thing is, if we decreased the number of tickets to make the event smaller and more manageable - to say, 50 tickets - we would be giving up a lot of opportunity to raise more money. I calculated that with 50 tickets, we'd only be raising a net total of $500, which in all honesty is next to nothing. The expenses of organizing this event (paying for tickets, room rental, food/drinks at the reception) would far outweigh the amount of money we could possibly raise.
Moreover, the actual buying the tickets from the DCT ended up being another obstacle to the whole event; when my parents found out that we would have to pay in advance to get the tickets, they did not feel comfortable allowing me to continue with the project. The paying-in-advance thing is pretty sketchy, to be honest, because what if I don't sell all the tickets? I'll be paying money out of my own pocket to support this fundraising event, and that is not what a fundraiser is about. That's not what it's meant to be.
So as a whole, this DCT event just wasn't working out. I spent much of today's thesis period writing these reasons out in a document and calling my mentor to explain all of this and discuss our next steps.
Like I told her during our phone conversation today, I came up with an alternative idea almost immediately, something that would be far more convenient for my thesis project - a 25 page paper explaining the problem of child illiteracy in India and the need for child education initiatives, and relating a more personal account of my own experiences working with Pratham through the summer and into the school year as part of the Readathon effort. This works way better for me, because I can write this paper on my own time; the responsibility is all on me, and there are no extraneous factors that I have to worry about to ensure they don't get in the way of me completing my thesis in time. In fact, I already have a few ideas in mind for what I want to include in the paper and how I want to go about structuring it, so over the next few class periods I'm going to sketch out the entire outline and make sure that I have everything I need - that way, writing the actual paper will be much easier.
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