Movember

Movember.

No, this was not a typo. This is actually a month-long event in November dedicated to raising awareness towards prostate cancer research. Ironically, a group of us girls got together and decided to do just that; raise both money and awareness within Westwood Collegiate. With such high statistics, (1 in 7 men will develop prostate cancer during their lifetime) we wanted students to be aware of something that may affect them (in the guys' cases) or someone they know sometime in life.

At first, it was a struggle to come up with a viable plan. How were we going to get the notoriously apathetic student body to donate money towards Movember? The male teachers had previously grown moustaches in honor of the month, but most students had only found it unsettling to see their usually cleanshaven teachers looking like wannabe mobsters. We decided to create a "mustache board" where there would be holes labelled with unnamed mustaches and students could "vote" on the best mustache (or their favorite teacher) with money. This plan would have worked well, but administration brought up the concern of theft, which I thought was pretty sad that we couldn't trust the whole student body. Instead, we spent entire lunch hours selling raffle tickets that students could use instead to vote. In addition, we decided to sell paper mustaches for students to sign and create a mustache wall. This idea was very cute compared to actual mustaches, and it was nice to see the support right on the wall. But having to sell for entire lunch hours in Movember was a very tiring experience, and it was almost disheartening how little money we actually received. 

Creating the "mustache board"

In the end, it was two bake sales that saved the day. One was a bake sale selling leftover decorated cookies from our Haunted Westwood Fundraiser. I was not involved in this particular bake sale, but the other girls sold all the cookies and made about $100. The second bake sale was an actual planned bake sale, and the delicious baked goods were definitely what garnered attention; whether or not the students cared about Movember. At the end of the day, we received $400, which sort of justified our previous efforts. 

 This was definitely a difficult project to undertake, yet I feel proud that I and the other girls stuck Movember out and tried our best to raise money. Though our overall donation was slightly less than what we expected, every cent counts towards Prostate cancer research. Again, notes for next year is to advertise like crazy, though our jobs will admittedly be easier without the job of having to create the board from scratch.

CAS Components
Creativity: Designing a fundraising plan.
Action: Social Service Project.
Service: Volunteer hours towards planning, initiating, and executing.