Amanda- Journal Entry November 12th 2020

At the beginning of my CAS experience I was determined to organize great events that would benefit the community, however, I wasn't really sure how I was going to achieve that. Thankfully my biggest flaw when starting the two projects I currently have wasn't lack of motivation but rather lack of experience. I think in a very logical way so everything I organize needs to be feasible and logistically correct so before any events or sale I do a practice run on how it would go down. When Cindy proposed the idea of reviving Keivan’s and Cloe’s CAS project I was very hesitant since my first thought of the large budget needed to run through with that project and realistically thinking that we wouldn't have enough time to raise all of that money. In this sense, my biggest challenge was dreaming high and believing I could achieve to finalize a project like it's the cultural exchange one. Now 11 months later, I have surprised myself how much money two teenage girls can fund. I knew fund raising for at least 80% of that trip was going to include lots of work, however, I wouldn't imagine it was going to be as much work as I do now. The main source of our funding was originally going to be donations and small bake sales at the school campus but due to the new pandemic that wasn't going to be possible. Our current main source of income is large food sales by order that Cindy and I make ourselves. We do take all of operational and marketing decisions and conduct them ourselves. This type of sales has taught me so much first-person experience on how to make a business profitable. For our first sale we made over 400 dollars of revenue but only had over 40 dollars of actual profit. After that incident I was able to learn that hard work does nott equal money. Yes, it's part of making profit but you also need thinking skills and a business mindset. These skills will help me in the future if I plan on setting up my own business or plan on working for an NGO that needs different methods of income. Now with these new skills and personal experience we will conduct our next sale of empanadas to finally pay for over 80% of our trip expenses and buy our tickets some time next year.