Cookies Against Malaria

Ryan has a simple, straightforward idea for his organize an activity. Here, he describes it in his own words:

I started this project by getting ingredients for cookies and baking the cookies. I then decided on a price and how many should be sold. After that I advertised the cookies by using social media and messaging family members. My first sale was from a friend responding to a social media post who wanted a bag. The majority of my sales happened on Thanksgiving where I sold eight bags overall to family members. I sold one last bag a few days after to a family friend. The total profits came out to $50. I then donated the money to a charity off of Peter Singer’s list of most effective charities. I ended up donating the money to the Against Malaria Foundation.

What did Ryan accomplish?

While I didn’t make much of a difference in the lives of the people I sold cookies too, I made a difference by donating the profits to charity and helping the people living in those malaria ridden countries.

Some skills I gained from doing this were: Independent thinking, communication, making a difference, and impacting others’ futures.

Ryan had a great idea,but I encourage YOU to take his tips to heart and see if you can build on this idea for your own organize an activity!!

I would say the biggest tip I could give from my experience is to plan ahead more. This means multiple things, for starters try to come up with an idea earlier rather than later. In my case I came up with the activity I ended up going with only a week before it was due. Another way of thinking ahead is to do the project not the week before it is due. Doing projects earlier gives you more breathing room for planning and executing your project. Starting earlier can also let you leave more of an impact because you would have a bigger time window to do your project. Advertising is also a key factor to this project, and you should advertise it well. While I did advertise for my project, I feel I could have done a better job about it. Try to reach out to as many people as possible, this will let them know what you are doing, and they might even spread the word to other people after that. Another thing that you could do which ties into planning ahead is that if you are going to post something to social media for your advertisement, try to do it a few weeks in advance instead of the week of your project.