In high school, I was the Vice President of my school’s Key Club. This was an organization that worked to provide service to its members, and our main goal was to execute our Annual Walk for Clean Water. Growing up in my town, I always knew how big of a deal this event was in our community. When my junior year of high school came around and I was elected Vice President of the club, I was extremely nervous to take on the role of being “behind-the-scenes” and having to plan the fundraiser.
This event is a 3.75 mile walk around my hometown, and it represents the average distance that someone living in the Eswatini Kingdom in Africa has to walk to access clean drinking water. All of the money that is made through participant registration for the walk, as well as donations and sponsorships, is donated to the Thirst Project to build safe drinking water wells in Africa.
Despite my anxiety about planning the event, I attacked the organizing head-on. I knew that it would require months of planning, hours of communicating with businesses for sponsorships, and a ton of teamwork with the other Key Club officers. Knowing that the annual event was always held in early April, we began our planning during the first semester of school. The entire process was exciting from setting up donor drives to receive donations to having a photoshoot to advertise our event. However, not every part of the journey was easy. There were weeks on end where our club would receive no communication from the companies that we relied on for money and supplies. It was extremely hard to stay optimistic during this time, but knowing what cause we were working towards kept us accountable.
When the time had finally come for the walk to happen, our plans finally fell into place. We had received thousands of dollars in participant registration, and even more money in donations. We had gotten chocolate bars from the Hershey company, water bottles from a local business, and raffle prize donations to give to our participants. We had three food trucks at the event who were all willing to donate a portion of their profit towards the cause. It was incredibly rewarding to see months of preparation before our eyes, and it was emotional.
At the end of the event, we totaled all of our money raised and found that we had exceeded our goal by so much money. We had raised over $22,000, and all of it would go towards something that we took pride in being a part of. Although the planning and responsibility of this project was incredibly intense, the outcome of it all was more than worth it. I was beyond proud to be involved in this project to ensure more people have access to safe drinking water.
Thank you.
How amazing to see the results of something you worked so hard on, come to life. $22,000 is a ton of money and I’m sure it made all of the times your committee felt hopeless worth it. I bet a lot of people attending the event in April really had zero clue on how much effort, planning, and organization really went into the whole thing
I think you planning this has to be the biggest flex ever! I bet the amount of love and effort you put into this was all worth it once you saw how much money you raised. I find it so kind when people organize events like these and I always try to participate!!
There was so nice and incredible to hear that you raised 22,000 dollars for the support which was really nice to see and hear. I loved that you put lots of effort into planning this entire thing and at the end showed those massive result that you yourself were probably hoping for. Overall I liked reading this post and showed that your hard work truly paid off.