Reflecting on ten years of event organizing and volunteering

I’m 23. The first time I ever helped plan an event was in grade 7, at 12.

For some reason, I was elected class committee vice-chairperson. In Hong Kong, such positions are thrown around like a hot potato – who wants to take responsibility? I have vague memories of what our class committee actually did; probably just the staples of the Christmas party and decorating the class bulletin board. Crappy and disorganized, I’m sure we were.

In grade 9, again, I was mysteriously elected. Class chairperson this time. Everyone was avoiding eye contact with the homeroom teacher when he asked if anybody would self-nominate for the position. My head shot up when someone said my name. I could barely summon enough courage to make a short speech in front of the class. My friend told me with a giggle that her neighbour whispered into her ear, “Who’s this Tiffany? Oh whatever, everyone else is voting for her.” Plus, I was the only candidate.

A year later, I found out that my homeroom teacher had beforehand requested another student to nominate me. Goodness knows why. He had to beckon me back to the front after I mumbled my speech and ran off. He told me I had to stand properly and ask if there were any questions from my voters. Even now, I still remember to do that every time I stand in front of people and talk.

Our class committee turned out to be the most fun I had in junior high. With a great group of people, we put on an interclass debate, an interclass drama competition, Christmas parties, farewell parties, hiking trips, barbequing trips… The committee members would complain loudly to everyone, but especially to me, that we had way more meetings than the other class committees. No one, though, could deny that the activities we planned were the envy of the whole grade. I was quite proud of what we had done. By the end, I wasn’t scared of standing in front of the class to give reports or drum up event attendance anymore.

I came back to Canada for grade 10. New environment, new high school culture, new life style. It took me a whole year to start getting involved in volunteering and organizing events again. Randomly, I signed up for a youth conference at UBC, featuring Simon Jackson (of Spirit Bear fame) and Dr. Jane Goodall. Super inspired is probably the only way to describe how I felt post-conference. My partner-in-crime and I started a Roots and Shoots club, the first environmental and humanitarian club at our school. Later, I also joined Grad Council, which is famous for organizing tons of fun and meaningful events for the grads. (And for the lead teachers to be slave driver-like, but I digress.)

The student advocacy and event organizing have never stopped since. I’ve been sleep deprived for the last 7 years of my life because I stepped into the world of events organizing. I distinctly remember one day in grade 12 where I had meetings from 7 am (wonder how my fellow club-mates put up with me!), at recess, at lunch, and then after school until 7 pm. I enjoyed most, if not all, hours I spent having meetings, writing schedules, getting funding, preparing agendas, and coordinating our volunteers. I thrived. I felt useful.

I truly believe that it was all this volunteering that changed my life. I studied what I did, I’ve gone to places where I’ve been, and will go to places where I want because of everything – skills, knowledge, and, dare I say, compassion – I learnt during those volunteering years.

I entered university, desperate to find my place in the world. What am I supposed to study? What should I do with my life? I entered a notoriously hard program called Science One at UBC. We were taught in an integrated style – math in biology class or the physics of chemistry. Our profs opened my mind in ways that made me overlook the crazy workload and stress levels. Yet, something was missing. I was surrounded by all these brilliant people, but there just wasn’t enough of the activism I enjoyed. Something felt lost; a purpose more than just studying those interesting subjects.

My mom brought up a project I did back for summer homework in grade 8 – the dollar project. I was watching a TV program on aid projects in China one day, and realised that it only took a miniscule (well, by Hong Kong standards) amount of money to send someone my age to school for a year. I just couldn’t understand. If only everyone gave a dollar at our school, we would be able to send so many children for education. My mom suggested it would be amazing if we could make this work at UBC. With so many students and the higher value of the Canadian dollar, you could donate to a lot of causes in the world. Help a lot of children, or animals, or the environment. You could do so much, if only you worked together!

The idea lit a fire under me. I wrote up a proposal for the UBC Dollar Project and sent it to all my fellow Science Oners. People were interested. We became an official club. We held events. We became a founding member of the UBC Global Lounge. We held successful The Briefing conferences. We won awards for being a good club. We started to be recognized. All this happened so fast. (Yet, so slow during those endless sleep-deprived-from-organizing-events-but-exams-are-looming-days.) The Dollar Project is one of the proudest things I’ve started in my life. I’m even prouder that it has continued to thrive after I had to leave.

I’ve changed so much during those years. You have to. Organizing events challenges you in ways you would never imagine. You have to be at least a bit good at everything – finances, facilitating meetings, nagging people to work (and being subtle about it), saving pennies here and there, pitching your organization, networking, or just plain pleading your friends to help you out with some last minute planning (which is probably 70% of the time on a student schedule). You learn that if you’re not good at some thing, persuade someone good to help you. You learn that if you don’t have the money to do what you want, go find funding. Nothing’s impossible. We held events with $100 budgets. It might not have been great events, but we tried. And they led to better events the next time we tried. You learn to juggle everything at once. Multitasking is a way of life, not a choice when you’re an organizer. But you also learn to be focused on one task at a time while multitasking, or else you’ll never get anything done. You learn that events only come together because of team work. Even if someone volunteers to take a few photos or write a 100 word blurb, don’t turn them away. Their help is needed and valued. You learn that stress is useful, only if you can control it. Being flexible doesn’t mean you don’t plan. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. Anything else that happens needs to be dealt with but not dwelled on…

I never really realised how useful all these soft skills were until I went on exchange in my second-to-last year at UBC. I landed in a rural Tanzanian village, given the task of troubleshooting for a, mostly failed, dairy goat project for orphans. I researched and researched. Eventually coming to the conclusion that the money evaporated because nobody knew how to project manage. I started giving them small suggestions, which turned out to all come from the lessons learnt during my volunteering years. It struck me that all my worries of not having enough knowledge about development theories and practices didn’t really matter in the end. I was still doing what I loved and did best – organizing – half way around the world, in a remote village.

Addicted to development work, I came back to east Africa after graduating, as soon as I could find a small salary to support myself. Every job I’ve had, my organizing skills have assisted me more than my knowledge. Knowledge you can learn, but skills you have to bring. My academic education helped me understand how I wanted to work in this world, but it’s my volunteering-learnt soft skills that have allowed me to actually put my desires into practice.

Ever since I’ve started working with different development actors, I’ve always wondered: how does this country function when the vast majority of its graduates lack any kind of team building and organizational skills? Most people I’ve talked to had never organized an event in their life. School work is individualized and lack opportunities for working in a team. How can there be good leaders and good followers when nobody has had the chance to develop those skills?

With all the buzz around youth-led development these days, you would think it’s just another development trend, probably discarded in a few years. It’s, however, one trend that I truly believe in. Yes, youth add a different perspective. Yes, future policies have to be designed with youth in mind because they are the ones most affected. The main reason, however, for me to support youth-led development is that youth need more opportunities to learn organizing skills. They need skills to put their thoughts and desires into action. Just voicing your perspectives and waiting for those adults to make it happen for you is so old school. It doesn’t work. It’s about time youth got the tools to make things move, on their own. That, to me, is what youth-led development is about.