Peace Action Group - MELBOURNE
September 2008
Update
During this month I had the opportunity to meet
with the new peace scholars and learn about their experiences in
Sydney during orientation week. I also learned about the initiative
of raising funds for the Afghanistan scholarship. They all had very
creative ideas on how to develop funds for that project. One of
these ideas was to organise a Mexican party and sell drinks and
food. However, we realised that things were not as easy as they are
in our home country. For instance, we didn’t know that we had to
have a licence to sell and serve alcohol. We also needed to follow
health regulations if we wanted to sell food. This idea was then
excluded as neither one of us had the alcohol/food licence.
We thought that the easiest thing for us to do
was to seek for a partnership with an organisation that had the
knowledge and experience to do an event of such nature. The Latin
American Student Association (LASA) was organising a Latin Party to
raise funds for their own organisation. We thought LASA would be
ideal for our project and we decided to write a proposal to
collaborate with them. The negotiation agreement was to promote the
party in each of our universities and obtain 60% of presold
tickets.
We managed to sell 102 tickets and raise $816
AUD for the Afghanistan scholarship. The party was a great success!
I believe it was a win-win situation for all of us. We raised funds
for Afghanistan; LASA was very happy with our collaboration and
professionalism on the promotion of the party; we all enjoyed the
party (it was so much fun!); and most importantly we became a team.
This was a very valuable experience for all of us as it brought us
together and enabled us to raise the funds for the Afghanistan
scholarship.
I take this opportunity to thank Eleanor Rivers
(Sydney office) and Carlie Blake (Melbourne office) for her support
on the promotion of the Latin Party. To LASA for believing on us as
a team and to the Melbourne group for their enthusiasm and
collaboration. I look forward to working with you again in any
future projects!
Sincerely,
Melania Guzman
|
