Event planning journal entry

The first part of my CAS project was to organize a fundraiser. When brainstorming ideas I immediately thought of a tennis tournament as my parents own a b&b with tennis courts, and in the past our school has organized successful tennis marathons. Throughout this process I had to learn to collaborate with my parents which many times was more difficult than I thought because from my experience working with someone you know and are close with on a personal level can complicate things. We have very different personalities and organizing things with them became infuriating at times for all of us. But I think at the end we were all able to collaborate well for the benefit of my project. I learnt to let my parents take charge of certain things as at the beginning I will admit I wasn’t accepting much help and was trying to organize everything myself. Despite our struggles my parents were tremendous help, and my fundraiser benefited a ton from collaborating with them. They have lived in tamarindo for over 20 years so all their experience and connections were key, my dad’s knowledge in tennis and pickleball was also crucial. Counting on him to help with the tournament allowed me to focus on other things like food, the animals, brochures, tickets, the raffle and just talking to people that were there in support. This process was something extremely new to me, which made it pretty stressful, and overwhelming at times but overall I feel like I gained useful experience in many areas. 

The planning process for this event began at the start of my first trimester of IB, for the first month everything was still very intangible, and ideas were mostly in my head as I brainstormed the organization. Gradually as I spent more time planning I found a system to keep me organized, by always carrying a little planner where I would write down my ideas, event details and to do lists. Once I had a clear idea of what my event would look like I began to more seriously communicate with my parents to approve and set a date for the event. Choosing a date was particularly important/nerve wracking because there was a chance of it raining as we were at the end of CR rainy season. Due to this the date was switched around until finally deciding on November 27, 2021. From that point there were so many details that still had to be organized, I started creating posters to advertise the event, I began contacting sponsors with the help of my mom who has incredible connections, figuring out the raffle tickets, creating the brochure, the ping pong table, thinking about the food I wanted to sell, etc.

A large part of this process for me was the advertising, I began doing this a month before the event announcing it at our various morning meetings in different campuses at our school, publishing it in the school newsletter that gets sent to parents and students in our community, posting it through various of the community facebook groups, my parents business social media, different tennis and pickleball whatsapp groups, and even my personal social media. I also created an instagram page for my project which I named CARE4PETS, where I published all the posters and info. This is also one of the outlets I’ll be using for people to contact me with animals in need of veterinary care. Creating advertisements and managing social media is a really key new skill that this event helped me develop, as well as just communicating with people and being able to sum up my project or introduce myself where all new experiences that I got to learn from. 

The 2 weeks prior to my event were the most stressful because it’s when I pulled everything together and finished all the details, I worked on finishing the brochure, getting the speaker, creating all the certificates, constantly advertising through social media, talking to people interested in signing up, organizing with my dad the tournaments/players, figuring out the food/ ingredients needed, where to get the brochures printed, all the prizes and many other little details. Similarly the day before the event was extremely packed, I finished organizing the details at night along with school work and some baking. To then wake up very early around 4 in the morning to continue baking and preparing everything. At around 9 my mom drove me to the hotel (the event location)with all the food, tickets and brochures, so I could start setting up. That day I had some amazing people that volunteered to help who were a great help with making sure everyone paid the entry fee and received a bracelet which were donated by my teacher from previous tennis marathons. As we were setting up we distributed the brochures around tables, set up a table at the entry, made boxes with change in cash, got the raffle prizes on the wall so people could see them, set up the food, and the speaker/music. Cavallini, the vet I’ll be working with also came over with his team and some puppies as we had planned in hopes the event could help them get adopted.

The event which started at 10:30 was amazing and much more successful than I imagined, we had a really great turn up of people and everyone seemed to enjoy their time. All the food was basically sold, a good amount of raffle tickets were sold and we received great donations. The event was always full of people and the matches went smoothly thanks to my dad’s help. Overall my goals which were to raise money to fund my project, inform people of the impact our diet can have on the environment, and create awareness of my project I believe were accomplished. The event raised over a thousand dollars and the feedback was really amazing/rewarding. People were really happy with the organization, the food and overall had a great time. 

Lastly before the event I filled out a risk management form as a tool, which I felt like I had mentally been doing since the beginning. Some of the risks I was worried about were a lack of turnout, level differences in the tournament, people leaving and not being there for the raffle,  people not paying the entry fee, and boredom inside the event. But I’m glad to say that I think we were able to avoid all these things from happening by really planning ahead and being creative like doing a video for the raffle the next day and having people write down a way to contact them.