On January 22nd, 2024, a few AYLUS members made posters and balloons to fundraise for our project. AYLUS Oakland Gardens Volunteer Branch had a project in 2024 to donate a “library” to children in Africa! This project aims to send at least 1000 books (from levels K to 8th grade) to children in poverty-stricken/affected areas in Africa. Our volunteer branch will be responsible for all the shipping costs of these books (estimated to be around $1200), and we will additionally donate $500 to Africa because they need this funding to prepare and build a library.
Achieving this goal is not that easy, so AYLUS members worked together to collect money for this goal . Because it was regents week for the high schoolers in our organization, they decided that they could help us sell all the balloons at an elementary school during this week.
To prepare for this event, AYLUS members worked together to make colorful and meaningful posters for the event. We designed colorful posters that pop out. Then, we wrote messages about our goal and how we needed lots of help and support to achieve this goal. After a long time of drawing and writing, we had four posters prepared to use during this event.
After this, a few AYLUS members worked together to pump up and skillfully tie balloons to mold them into many things. Some of these balloons include cats, swords, pikachus, and bunnies. While making balloons many balloons popped during the making which scared some of the members at first. Popping balloons was just as frustrating as it was scary due to the fact that balloons sometimes popped during the last few steps of folding. This was upsetting because members spent a long time making some of the balloons just for it to pop. But even though a majority of the balloons popped we still continued to make balloons and still managed to make a large amount of balloons due to our determination to keep going. We had to make our balloons a day prior to the event. This is because these balloons will quickly deflate, thus making all our hard work nothing if we had made them before.
Our Volunteers:
Jia Qi (Angela) Liu: 2 hours
Stephanie ShiRan You: 2 hours
Sophia ShiHan You: 2 hours
Hong Hao (Alfred) Liu: 2 hours
Report by Stephanie ShiRan You, & Sophia ShiHan You
Reviewed by Jia Qi Liu (Angela)
