Challenges and Successes

The group identified the following as being challenges in devising and implementing our assignment, and formulated the following strategies to overcome them -

1. Defining our focus and limiting our ideas –
It was difficult for us to define exactly what we wished to achieve and the methods whereby we would do this. This difficulty was encountered as a result of the broad nature of the topic, and the variety of ideas presented by the group. We had to limit ourselves in line with financial and time constraints. Although we managed to raise a substantial amount of money, we then had to decide how to utilize it in a way that would achieve our objectives as cost-effectively and efficiently as possible.

We thus chose to use it to do the following –
- Purchase food, toiletries and other items needed by a number of organizations that assist abused women and children;
- Implement our awareness campaign by buying or making the following –
Posters, flyers, leaflets;

• Badges, T shirts;
• Our Awareness and Advocacy Packages;
• A 16 Days of Activism Mural (situated outside Student’s Union Building)
  - Putting together and finalizing our written and oral presentation and all the materials needed in that respect.

2. Co-ordination and working in a large group -
This proved to be very taxing, as having members from both groups in our year meant that there were many timetable clashes, and not all members were free at the same time. It was difficult to meet up and delegate work and supervise progress of work.

To combat this challenge we drew up Meeting Schedules and Progress Reportswhich dealt with the following –

- Each person’s individual tasks for the week, and progress made and steps to still be taken.
- All other member’s tasks, current progress and further steps to be taken. This was to ensure that everyone in the group knew what all the other members were doing and could check up on each other’s progress and offer assistance where needed.
- A record of items discussed at meetings, so that we could draw further ideas and inspirations and keep a record of the development of our Campaign Plan and our objectives;
- A register of attendance, so that we could keep track of and identify those individuals that needed to be encouraged to work harder, in order to prevent anyone from being inactive and to avoid conflicts over the amount of work being done by individuals. The register also served to identify those persons who made a contribution over and above what was expected. A register also compelled members to attend meetings, failing which they had to excuse themselves beforehand and apologise to the group. It also stated the time, date and place of future meetings – so there could be no confusion in that respect and to avoid wasting time searching for venues and group members.

3. Encouraging people on campus to contribute to our campaign -
At first, we thought to put out posters and email all students and staff with a list of requirements, informing them that they could drop them off at Collection Points around campus, but this proved to be ineffective, although people noticed our posters, emailed in asking where they could drop stuff off, but then the following happened –
- Boxes were stolen or thrown away at the collection points;
- People weren’t interested in making a contribution, or it was too much of a hassle to bring bags of clothing or canned food in to campus to drop off;
- Students at the Westville campus Law Clinic used our posters and our publicity from the emails, collected our contributions and then used them for their own purposes. We had confirmation that they used our posters from Professor Vawda, who remarked that he had seen our poster on Westville campus while lecturing there.

So we dealt with the above-mentioned setbacks by raising funds ourselves in order to purchase what we had hoped students would contribute. We raised these funds in the following ways –
- Soliciting contributions from the lecturers on Campus.This proved to be very effective, and we raised a large portion of our funds in this way;
- Having a cake sale. Although we were at first opposed to this idea, it was relatively easy to organize, execute and raised a fair amount of money.
- Selling our Red and White Ribbons. This raised about a quarter of our total sum, and served a two-fold purpose. Firstly, raising funds, and secondly promoting awareness of our cause and about the 16 Days of Activism in general.
- An intra-group donation scheme was set up, whereby we each contributed money, materials or time and skills as we were each able to. This also proved to be very profitable, and showed our group’s willingness to reach into their own pockets for our cause.
- Emailing various companies, corporations and organizations requesting donations and contributions, and although we received many refusal e-mails in return we did manage to receive a donation from Pick ‘n Pay. Although Lil-Lets was willing to donate a number of sanitary products, it proved too difficult to organize the delivery in time for our presentation.
- Our personal contacts were utilised to their full extent, in this respect we achieved the following –

• Tamaryn made use of her contact, Phil Botha of Flatline Productions, to paint a mural on campus publicizing the 16 Days of Activism, and outlining the important dates;
• Fiona’s father owns a wholesale store, from which we received a number of generous donations;
• Terrence and Sarah of Delta Communications sponsored all our printing, copying and stationery requirements for the awareness portion of our campaign, and also the costs of printing and binding our written presentation and various other materials;
• Tony Miller of Tony Miller Promotions produced our Campaign badges for us at a discounted price; and assisted us in organizing our campaign T shirts.
  
  We thus suprised ourselves by turning our challenges into successes.