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Late last fall, we received a letter from People to People Ambassador Programs, inviting our older daughter to travel with the group to London and Paris as a student ambassador. We'd never heard of the organization, so we were initially a bit skeptical. However, our research revealed that this was a legitimate organization, founded by President Eisenhower (among others) to promote peace by allowing ordinary people from different countries to meet each other and learn about other cultures. We decided to investigate this opportunity further.
And so, early this year we attended an information session, and our daughter applied for the trip. After collecting letters of recommendation and being interviewed by the trip leader, she was selected to be one of the forty students on the trip in July. We paid for the trip with a credit card, but after considering the expense, we encouraged our daughter to try her hand at fundraising to cover some of the trip costs.
I believe it was her piano teacher who suggested the idea of selling cookies. Our daughter enjoys baking, and had a history of success with selling Girl Scout cookies, making it an idea with potential. We formed a tentative plan before we traveled to Colorado for a week of skiing, with the idea that we would figure out how to implement it when we returned.
The week we returned from the ski trip, winter arrived on the East Coast with a vengeance. A series of snow storms began to pummel the region, culminating in a record-breaking pair of blizzards in the middle of February. In the midst of this, old friends of mine arrived for a brief visit, and they embraced our cookie baking scheme with gusto, helping us turn our outlined plan into a reality, helping bake test batches of cookies and encouraging the initial efforts to publicize our cause.
Our initial target was Valentine's Day. We were making over-sized, heart-shaped cookies, hoping people might be interested in giving them out as Valentine's Day treats. We were almost overwhelmed with the response. Even though Valentine's Day came during the midst of some of the worst winter weather on record for this area, we managed to make and deliver about 100 cookies, raising nearly $800 in the process.
After that initial success, we followed up with shamrock-shaped cookies for St. Patrick's Day and Easter Egg cookies for Easter. While neither of these generated the huge response we had for Valentine's Day, each did generate cookie sales and increased the success of the fundraising effort. Along the way, people started making special requests: One neighbor was hosting a charity jewelry sale and asked if we could do a cookie for that party. The result was a cookie in the shape of a ring, complete with a gemstone. We've also had requests for dozens of more conventional sized cookies for various parties and meetings. We are now receiving orders for cookies for Father's Day, and it looks like this final push might bring in another sizable chunk of cash.
Our mechanic, in addition to buying several cookies, also offered our daughter an additional fundraising option: His service station sells a service coupon card that includes a number of discounts on common auto maintenance services. The cards sell for $49.95, and he offered to give her $25 for every card she sold for him. While she hasn't sold a large number of these, it has still contributed a couple of hundred dollars to the overall effort. To date, she has raised over $2,000!
We've now finished all the preparatory meetings for the trip, and the students have completed their community service project (they held a bake sale last Saturday to raise money for a animal rescue foundation). They will be heading to Dulles Airport in two groups over the next couple of weeks, for tours of the facilities, so they know what to expect at the security screenings and so forth. Then, at the end of the month, we will have a big "bon voyage" party for them, and they will be off for two weeks in England and France.
Our daughter is getting excited about the trip, and doesn't seem overly nervous about traveling without us. Her itinerary suggests that she's going to be pretty busy for two weeks, and includes some things that have me wishing I could join her on the trip (they'll be seeing a play in London's Theatre District, spending a day touring the beaches in Normandy, visiting Versailles and the Louvre, among other things). They will also be spending an afternoon with some Members of Parliament in London, learning about the UK's government and comparing it to our own.
It has been a busy spring, piling trip preparations and fundraising on top of our already busy schedule, but the experience of traveling to two of the great cities of Europe shortly after her twelfth birthday should be well worth the effort. I also think there have been valuable lessons learned along the way, about time management as we worked to fit everything into the schedule; about inter-personal skills as she dealt with people in her fundraising efforts; about organization in the record keeping required to track the progress of those fundraising efforts.
When we first opened that letter, a little more than half a year ago, I don't think we expected this to become such an all encompassing part of our lives, but the rewards seem to be paying off as our daughter has developed a great deal of additional self confidence and maturity. I can't wait to see what impact the actual trip will have on her.
And so, early this year we attended an information session, and our daughter applied for the trip. After collecting letters of recommendation and being interviewed by the trip leader, she was selected to be one of the forty students on the trip in July. We paid for the trip with a credit card, but after considering the expense, we encouraged our daughter to try her hand at fundraising to cover some of the trip costs.
I believe it was her piano teacher who suggested the idea of selling cookies. Our daughter enjoys baking, and had a history of success with selling Girl Scout cookies, making it an idea with potential. We formed a tentative plan before we traveled to Colorado for a week of skiing, with the idea that we would figure out how to implement it when we returned.
The week we returned from the ski trip, winter arrived on the East Coast with a vengeance. A series of snow storms began to pummel the region, culminating in a record-breaking pair of blizzards in the middle of February. In the midst of this, old friends of mine arrived for a brief visit, and they embraced our cookie baking scheme with gusto, helping us turn our outlined plan into a reality, helping bake test batches of cookies and encouraging the initial efforts to publicize our cause.
Our initial target was Valentine's Day. We were making over-sized, heart-shaped cookies, hoping people might be interested in giving them out as Valentine's Day treats. We were almost overwhelmed with the response. Even though Valentine's Day came during the midst of some of the worst winter weather on record for this area, we managed to make and deliver about 100 cookies, raising nearly $800 in the process.
After that initial success, we followed up with shamrock-shaped cookies for St. Patrick's Day and Easter Egg cookies for Easter. While neither of these generated the huge response we had for Valentine's Day, each did generate cookie sales and increased the success of the fundraising effort. Along the way, people started making special requests: One neighbor was hosting a charity jewelry sale and asked if we could do a cookie for that party. The result was a cookie in the shape of a ring, complete with a gemstone. We've also had requests for dozens of more conventional sized cookies for various parties and meetings. We are now receiving orders for cookies for Father's Day, and it looks like this final push might bring in another sizable chunk of cash.
Our mechanic, in addition to buying several cookies, also offered our daughter an additional fundraising option: His service station sells a service coupon card that includes a number of discounts on common auto maintenance services. The cards sell for $49.95, and he offered to give her $25 for every card she sold for him. While she hasn't sold a large number of these, it has still contributed a couple of hundred dollars to the overall effort. To date, she has raised over $2,000!
We've now finished all the preparatory meetings for the trip, and the students have completed their community service project (they held a bake sale last Saturday to raise money for a animal rescue foundation). They will be heading to Dulles Airport in two groups over the next couple of weeks, for tours of the facilities, so they know what to expect at the security screenings and so forth. Then, at the end of the month, we will have a big "bon voyage" party for them, and they will be off for two weeks in England and France.
Our daughter is getting excited about the trip, and doesn't seem overly nervous about traveling without us. Her itinerary suggests that she's going to be pretty busy for two weeks, and includes some things that have me wishing I could join her on the trip (they'll be seeing a play in London's Theatre District, spending a day touring the beaches in Normandy, visiting Versailles and the Louvre, among other things). They will also be spending an afternoon with some Members of Parliament in London, learning about the UK's government and comparing it to our own.
It has been a busy spring, piling trip preparations and fundraising on top of our already busy schedule, but the experience of traveling to two of the great cities of Europe shortly after her twelfth birthday should be well worth the effort. I also think there have been valuable lessons learned along the way, about time management as we worked to fit everything into the schedule; about inter-personal skills as she dealt with people in her fundraising efforts; about organization in the record keeping required to track the progress of those fundraising efforts.
When we first opened that letter, a little more than half a year ago, I don't think we expected this to become such an all encompassing part of our lives, but the rewards seem to be paying off as our daughter has developed a great deal of additional self confidence and maturity. I can't wait to see what impact the actual trip will have on her.
