Tuesday, December 9, 2008

"Baskets of Hope" 2008 feedback and overview Jon Farhadian

The early days in the “Bar” seem so long ago. I can remember sitting in the dimmed lighting of that classroom with those tiny little desks. This is when we first began to learn about the “Baskets of Hope” project. We were to work together to reach our goal of 90 Thanksgiving food baskets. This number to me looked high at first, but everyone knew that it needed to happen. Average families are struggling right now. Imagine what’s happening to people with low income jobs. This year called for a greater demand of food and money donations.
The only way to get people to donate was to make people aware of the project. My specific group dealt with resident halls, so I went and talked to my dorm about poverty and why they should donate some food baskets. I e-mailed hall directors, if they didn’t e-mail me back I called them. I started off slow. I didn’t know how to approach people, probably with similar financial concerns and ask them to donate. The thing I didn’t realize is how willing people are to help. People love to help other people; they enjoy being a part of something big. All you have to do is ask. I wish I knew this right off the bat. To someone starting this project next fall I recommend you get on the ball right away and get donors, you’ll be happy you did.
It was also nice to see the way my classmates worked under pressure. We had a nice mix of personalities in our class that bonded just right. We were able to watch our basket count go up. We eventually passed our 90 basket mark and finished with around 170 baskets. The “Baskets of Hope” project gave me some eye opening insight to the world of poverty. The demand for baskets was as high as we expected it to be due to the current economic conditions. Probably a little more than expected. I never realized how serious of an issue poverty was within our own community. Participating in this project was a privilege and if I could do it over again I would go at it way harder. One important lesson I learned through a project like this is try not to “fall asleep” because before I knew it, it was over and it had me feeling like I wish I did more. All in all the “Baskets of Hope” 2008 project was a huge success and I hope its number exceed these next fall.

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