During this past semester, I have been involved in a bunch of community service with Vivere il Volontariato at NYU in Florence. In addition to teaching English at a school, my roommates and I have been raising money and awareness for Dynamo Camp (pronounced DEE-nah-moh). "Dynamo Camp is the first summer camp in Italy to be structured specifically for children with serious or chronic illnesses who are currently in therapy or in post-hospitalization convalescence." Dynamo Camp, a Hole in the Wall Camp, is a Paul Newman initiative, and he started it here because, while we have organizations like Make-A-Wish in America, Italy offers no camp-like programs for seriously and terminally ill children.
So, to get people donating to and talking about Dynamo Camp, we did two things: 1) We had bake sales and 2) we held a talent show. Both of the things worked really well, and I think we accomplished our goals. We raised quite a bit of money, and everyone on campus now knows about Dynamo Camp.
In the end, everything turned out amazing, but for a time, things weren't so great. Most of us in Vivere il Volontariato had little experience with fund raisers, and even less with event planning. It was really hard to make the bake sales profitable, especially with a couple different factors working against our favor. And we really thought that the Talent Show was going to turn into a flop. The lowest point was definitely the week before the show, and maybe three people had bought tickets to the show. After working for months deciding on logistics, organizing talent, and having meetings, it looked like all of our hard work would be for nothing.
We knew that we had to change something if we wanted to sell more tickets. So, instead of having bake sales, we began to give away free baked goods. Now it sounds ridiculous, and with the sign
"Free Cookies** (**'Free Cookie' offer only eligible for Talent Show ticket holders)"it must have looked ridiculous, but it worked incredibly well. Before the show, we had sold about 60 tickets, and at the actual show, there were over 100 people in attendance. And not only did we actually sell a bunch of tickets and raise money, but the Talent Show itself was very entertaining. I'm pretty sure that when anyone thinks of a talent show, they think it's going to be so lame. Even in High School Musical 2, the talent show was pretty bad until Troy and Gabriela whipped out "Everyday." But our talent show was really good. Despite all of the obstacles and doubtful moments, I'm really happy with the way everything turned. Take a look for yourself at some select clips from the talent show: