Hello everybody! Week 7 at ETSS Tewahedo Social Services was a short one because I spent the first couple of days with my family. Nonetheless, we’ve made some good progress toward Youth Summit planning. The volunteer signup platform is live and buzzing. I put my (heavily Canva-reliant) graphic design skills to good use to create a slideshow of pictures of the kids at summer camp. I’m also working on a seating chart based on the average attendance figures from the different sites.  

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of eating at Lalibela, an Ethiopian restaurant in Whitehall and longtime catering partner of ETSS. They have given us a generous discount on lunch for the Youth Summit. I also requested and picked up gift card donations from Northstar/Brassica and Chipotle, which we will raffle off in October at our largest fundraising event of the year, Evening of Promise. I picked up cases of bottled water that Trader Joe’s generously agreed to donate as well. I’m feeling proud of my fundraising successes this week.  

I received some unfortunate news today about our funding for the Youth Summit: a sponsor, whose logo we had been given permission to use and whose contribution made up a large percentage of our budget, has dropped out. Also, Fiscal reached out to let the Youth team know that we are in a budget deficit from last year’s Youth Summit. This throws a major kink in our plans for the event, which will now be operating on a much smaller budget than previously anticipated. I will likely be shifting gears to focus more on applying for last-minute event sponsorships rather than small in-kind donations such as gift cards. It’s not totally clear how this will affect the event yet, but we’re collectively mourning the loss a bit.  

Until next week,  

Sanay