I am excited to announce that the Perth-wide service project working with Uniting WA providing essentials to those experiencing homelessness has been published in national news website Horizons, on YouTube, and on Baha'i Blog!
⭐ https://lnkd.in/gQ-FJ5k6
⭐ https://lnkd.in/gArqBPQR
⭐ https://lnkd.in/gX7zgM7E
Sonia Raisi and I teamed up to initially organize a collaboration service project between the ECU and UWA Baha'i Societies, but as we learned more about Uniting WA's need for large-scale donations, we decided to take on the challenge of transforming it into a Perth-wide event.
We had never organized an initiative of this scale before, so we wanted to share some of our learning!
1. Take time to learn from the professionals. It is imperative with any project to maintain honesty in what can be accomplished with your capabilities alone, and when to seek wisdom from other professionals. Recognizing that we had little education on what it is like to be experiencing homelessness in Perth, we decided to reach out to Rhys Powell from Uniting WA, since Uniting WA is the leading nonprofit in Western Australia for tackling this challenge. Our Zoom meeting with him allowed us to refine our vision and task breakdown to maximize the effect we could have on our local community.
2. Diversify advertising, but invest the most time on one-on-one invitations because they are harder to miss and more enticing to accept. We let others know about the event through the ECU and UWA Baha'i Society Instagrams, youth group chats, junior youth group leaders, emails sent by local institutions, and one-on-one messages between friends and acquaintances. By far, the most effective form of communication that influenced others to participate was the final one.
3. Be clear in communicating the level of inclusivity of the event. We strongly encouraged all the junior youth groups in Perth to participate in the project by collecting from their local neighbourhoods. However, many of the older generations misunderstood this encouragement to mean that the event was only for youth and junior youth. Thus, they thought that they could not participate, even though this was an all-inclusive event.
Some more details:
✨ We had 150-200 donors total
✨ By the end of the event, we had received so many donations that the stage was overflowing!
✨ About 70 people attended the event
✨ The program consisted of a presentation from Rhys, refreshments, and a social portion
If you want to get involved in our next service project, feel free to send me a message! The UWA and ECU Baha'i Societies are committed to organizing events that are focused on including as many individuals as possible with the goal of eliminating apathy towards social issues and nurturing a sense of united protagonism throughout Perth.