Last Wednesday, November 13th Briana O’Neil, Olivia Ackerman and I (2010s) hosted a fundraiser to support the completion of the nurses’ quarters at the Kpoeta Clinic. We are thrilled to report it was a success!
Shortly after Olivia moved to the Washington DC area this past summer, the three of us met for dinner to catch up. We of course spent most of that time reminiscing about Periclean Scholars and talking about our community partnership. We heard that the construction of the nurses’ quarters had slowed significantly. This was almost entirely due to our decreased flow of funds to support the purchase of materials, etc. After graduation we expected our class’ fundraising efforts would not continue at the pace we had achieved as undergraduates, but we had to admit we could be doing more to further advocate for our initiatives with our partners in Ghana. So we decided to pool our efforts to plan a fundraising event here in DC. We wanted to have a low-key event so that planning wouldn’t be too time-consuming considering our busy schedules. Since we hadn’t done something like this before, we didn’t set a set specific fundraising goal. Our aim was to spend little to no money organizing the event, invite as many people as possible, raise more funds than we could contribute independently, and have a good time doing it! We thought this would be a great way reconnect with our inner Pericleans and get involved with our class projects again.
Planning the event wasn’t a burden because we delegated the various tasks and time necessary to pull the event together. Our first step was to secure a venue and band then we tackled promoting the event. After looking into hosting fundraisers at a few different bars, we quickly realized we didn’t want to have to be held to minimums since we weren’t sure what attendance would be like. Luckily we connected with the owner of Haydee’s, a popular El Salvadorian restaurant. The owner, Haydee, loves to support causes as a way of attracting more clients on week nights. Briana, Olivia and I agreed having live music would definitely draw more people. My neighbors recently formed a band and one of their first performances was an open mic night at Haydee’s a couple months ago. I told the band about the cause and asked whether they would like to headline for the event in-kind. They loved the idea, especially since it would also be a great way to get more exposure. With the plans confirmed, we then created a facebook event, Evite, and hard copy flyer to promote the cause, restaurant and band. Our primary marketing strategy was to tell all our friends and co-workers about it, and reminded them multiple times. It paid off!
Around 6:30pm on Wednesday our friends started arriving at Haydee’s. We setup a table with flyers and a donation bucket at the front door and encouraged people to contribute $8 to see the band and support the completion of the nurses’ quarters. We also reminded everyone to write “support the clinic” on their receipts since Haydee’s was donating a portion of the profits on food and drink sales. The restaurant started filling up as the band got fired up. In between sets we shared information about the the Kpoeta Clinic and Periclean in general. We read a recent email from our community partners and each took turns talking about our respective visits to Kpoeta. It was incredible to see so many friends there having a good time!
Haydee’s was also pleased to see a full-house so early on a Wednesday evening. Briana, Olivia and I were blown away by everyone’s generosity. And the band was a big hit too. In fact, the owner liked them so much that she booked them for their first paid gig next month. Everyone involved got something very positive out of the event indeed! Check-out the band here and if you’re in DC on Dec. 6th come to Haydee’s Restaurant in Mt. Pleasant.
OUR FUNDRAISING GRAND TOTAL: $1,050.00
WOW!! We’re so excited to send these funds over to Kpoeta to help complete the nurses’ quarters. Pulling this off was totally do-able and I encourage my fellow Percielan alumn to try something similar. We had so much fun; we’ve already been talking about doing another event in the spring J
It was just really wonderful to work with fellow Pericleans again! It was nice having the moral support and sense of accountability and collaboration from fellow Pericleans who share in the mission and vision of the project. Proud to be a Periclean!
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