First Steps
A month has passed since I arrived in Spain, and I feel ready to start fundraising here! I've got quite a few ideas floating around (for those who know me personally- yes, I do get them every once in a while, don't seem so surprised), but there are a few in particular that I'm going to start working on now.
As eating out is expensive here, but fresh ingredients are relatively cheap, I've been cooking a lot. I've had friends over several times for dinner, and even when I don't invite anyone over I share what I cook with my flatmates. I've made a donation jar, so the next time I share a home-made meal with my friends they can show their appreciation by donating some of their change to Invisible Children! Its a small thing, but I'm going to be cooking anyway. Plus, its a good way to bring up exactly what it is that Invisible Children is and does with my friends.
Secondly, in the next few days I'm going to translate and print out information sheets about Invisible Children. It'll be much easier on me, and much clearer to who I'm talking to, to give them an information sheet and then answer any questions they might have. Plus they have my contact information and the URLs to this website and InvisibleChildren.com, assuming they speak english. And when I start organizing events to raise money for Invisible Children, having some sort of information sheet I can pass out is crucial.
Now for a bit of a belated segue: The next idea I'm putting into action is offering my services as an English tutor. I've already started putting up flyers. I talked to a Spanish friend, and he said that as a native speaker, I can charge 15-20 Euros per hour to tutor. I figure I'll start out at 15 Euros, and if I'm inundated with requests I can bump up my price to 20 Euros. What I earn, I'll donate to Invisible Children. I don't mind doing this because I have scholarships to cover my study abroad expenses, and I figure its a great way to meet Spaniards. What's cool is that in this case, as with any money I make here, the exchange rate works in my favor. Say each week I tutor about 3 hours. That's 45 Euros, or 60-70 dollars for Invisible Children. And at the end of each session, I can briefly explain what I'm doing with the money to my students, and give them one of those information sheets I was just talking about.
The first event I'm going to start organizing is a trivia night. In the US, trivia nights at bars are fairly common; not so here in Spain (atleast from what I have seen so far). So I'm going to talk to the owners of a few bars and see if they'd be willing to let me organize a trivia night. If its successful, I could make it into a regular occurrence. Its great for them because whoever comes to the trivia night is surely going to be ordering something to drink! Besides finding a suitable bar, the key to this is making sure there's a respectable turnout. If anyone has any experience with organizing trivia games, I'd love to hear from you!
From here on out, expect much more regular posts, now that I'm a bit more established in Spain!
