My first REAL Peace Corps Project!

This is my first REAL drop in the bucket towards helping my partner organization become more self-sustaining in the long run—the heart of my work here in Moldova. Unlike the many events I’ve helped the youth with, this was an event the youth had never been exposed to before, and I helped them orchestrate it. Needless to say, I finally feel like I’ve contributed something!

The situation is something like this. The youth want to do lots of great projects (like building a playground and helping surrounding communities build youth centers), but they do not have any sources of income. In a planning discussion with some of the youth leaders, we decided to take advantage of the large amount of people who would be coming in for our town’s wine day and sell something. Raising the money ourselves is far more sustainable than grant writing, plus the money is easier to appreciate when you have to work for it!

So what did they want to sell? It went something like this: “Melissa, do you know how to make those cookies from America with chocolate?” And off we went…

A week before our chocolate chip cookie sale, I taught seven girls how to bake the cookies. Then each boy from the youth center purchased and donated an ingredient to the girls. Each girl was responsible for baking a batch of cookies at home the day before the event. The result of our bake sale, the first-ever for the youth, raised a quarter of a teacher’s monthly salary in just over two hours! Everyone went home happy.

In addition to the monetary gain, here are a few other successes of the event. The youth did a new kind of fundraising, and interacted with people from the whole raion in doing so. They had the opportunity to tell people who they are and what they want to do with the money that will help the community. They educated people about the concept of donating to good causes, and saw that the youth were working for their money. So many people were new to this idea!

We discovered two significant cookie selling strategies at this event. First, the youth had to be energetic. When they danced the hora with customers, and made themselves noticeable, more people came over to see what was going on at our booth.

This gal, Vica, would earn a free trip to summer camp for cookie sales if she only had that little green uniform. She was dancing all over the place to attract customers, taking platefuls around to all the exhibitioners, and had a sales-pitch that only a kid selling newspapers on a soap box could compete with! Way to go Vica!

And, about 40 minutes into our cookie sale, and through a series of discussions unknown to me, I ended up on stage with 500 pairs of eyes staring at me while I explained who I was, why I helped the youth prepare these cookies, and the great plans for the money that we will raise (for the next two days people stopped me on the street to ask how long I’ve studied Romanian. Compliment or criticism???). By the time I made my way back to the booth, I couldn’t actually get through the crowd. We made close to 100 lei in the ten minutes immediately following my little announcement. Overall, the event was a huge learning experience for the youth.

The best way to wrap this up is to quote my partner’s reaction. Mind you, this is a translation. But the last word of the quote is the same in English, just that the “u” is pronounced with something more like an “oo” sound and the “er” is more like the word “air. Try it, it will be more meaningful.

“Melissa, this was a good idea. I was a pessimist this morning, but that was super!”