How the ability to learn quickly and introduce new knowledge helped me a lot when participating in a charity project
Daria Mikhailova
?? Senior Learning Experience Designer | Expert in Educational Strategy & Technologies | 11+ years creating education that address business & user needs | Women in tech Volunteer | Career Development Specialist
At the school where I worked, a charity fair was held annually in the spring, in which employees, students and their parents took part. Handmade products, food and drinks, and games of various genres were usually presented at the fair. In 2020, due to the pandemic, it was impossible to hold a fair, so the idea arose to hold a charity fair in an online format. The task was absolutely new for us and for me personally. Already in the course of discussion with colleagues, I already began to have a lot of ideas and I was included in the team of this project. A couple more people supported this initiative and we started working. I suggested adding 2-3 more people to the team in order to distribute functions among everyone and develop this direction together.
As a result of the discussion, we identified several areas of activity for this project. We had a lot of work ahead of us, we had literally 1.5-2 weeks to launch this project, as we wanted to coincide the opening of the project with the holiday at school. During the evening I created three versions of the banner for the announcement of the fair, because I already had some experience in creating posters and banners for concerts. I discussed with my colleagues which banner concept they like more and what they think can be fixed and improved. We came to a consensus and chose a banner for mailing in school chats.
? Regarding the website, my colleague said that he could ask the programmer who made the school website to make a website for the fair. But I thought if the fair's website looks like a school website, it would be sad. In my opinion, something fresh and catchy attention was needed. Therefore, I suggested such an option that I would look for an online course on creating websites on Tilda (a website constructor) and try to figure it out in the next 4-5 days. If I can make at least just a website, then we will not involve a programmer in this, if I fail, then we will ask for the help of a programmer.
I quickly found an intensive course on creating an online store on Tilda, which could help me solve our problem, since I needed not just a landing page or a site with several tabs, but a platform for the sale of goods within this project. I started watching this course the next day and started creating a website for the fair right during the training course, understanding the overall structure of the site and the details. I had a lot of questions and I wrote them out to myself on paper and later looked for answers in the Tilda reference materials, and I also found the Telegram chat of Tilda web designers and asked my questions there a couple of times when I couldn't find the answer in the help. I redesigned the site several times, deciding which site structure and visual concept would suit us the most. Within 4 days, I already had a raw version of the site and I experienced an incredible burst of energy from what I'm doing and it turns out great! You can watch this video, which I shared with colleagues and showed what I get in the process.
In addition to creating the site itself, we brainstormed a lot with colleagues, as we were faced with the task of coming up with all the logistics of the project, starting from receiving goods from the creators, creating criteria for receiving goods: we asked the creators, if possible, to take photos themselves to remove part of this work from us, since such processes take a huge amount of time and effort if there are a lot of goods. We also asked them to write a description of the goods, which included the name, composition, dimensions, possibly a description of what this product is for and how it can be used, as well as the price. We also had to think about how and who receives goods from the creators, where they will be stored, who and how will collect and package orders and transfer them to customers, how to keep financial records, decide with an accountant what payment methods we can use so that everything is legal, but at the same time convenient for customers. Who will conduct the main correspondence with creators and buyers, supervise order processing and communication with customers.
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After an intensive discussion, we distributed the roles among ourselves, one colleague was engaged in the mail of the fair, communication with customers and orders from the site. The other two colleagues were engaged in the design of the fair window at school, packing orders. I wrote all the texts on the site and verified them with colleagues, was able to make a basket for paying goods (for me it was one of the difficult tasks), we tested the site and that everything works well. I also posted the first 150 goods on the site and edited photos, filled out descriptions, learned how to make goods cards and distribute goods categories. Then I taught this to two other colleagues so that other team members would also join the posting of goods on the site and everything would not be dependent only on me. Another colleague was engaged in social networks, ads, promotions and sweepstakes. We involved school security guards to help us to give orders, which was great, since they are at school 24/7 and it was not difficult and pleasant for them to participate in the project.
As a result, in just two weeks we launched a large-scale project of an online charity fair, which was created by the efforts of a very small team and lasted for 6 months. We had two types of visual: first for the autumn fair, and then it gradually flowed into the winter fair and we completely changed the visual of the site for this. You can see in this video what the winter version of the fair site looks like. We managed to attract more than 70 creators to the fair, who brought and transferred goods to us at the fair for charitable purposes, as well as with the opportunity to advertise on our website and leave their contacts. During the 6 months of the project, about 400 items of goods passed through our hands, and the number of goods themselves was much larger. We rallied as a team and constantly helped each other. This project has inspired many and we have heard a lot of warm reviews from both buyers and parents and the creators of the goods themselves. We managed to raise a decent amount of money for such a small project without any financial investments, beside Tilda subscription.
Personally, I was very inspired by this project, as we faced many completely different tasks at once that needed to be solved together. I really enjoyed working in a team, sometimes being its leader and sometimes a participant, receiving feedback from colleagues from the team and from people from outside, brainstorming and creating together with the team, discussing ideas and as a result of discussions, something new was constantly born. I was pleased to receive feedback from friends and acquaintances to whom I showed the stages of creating projects in my personal instagram account, some of my friends even wanted to participate and buy something at the fair, my cousin, who creates author's notebooks, also wanted to participate and gave a lot of her goods to the fair. I was very happy to see how the eyes of the children who sewed toys for the fair or painted pictures had sparkles.
I believe that I have managed to show my strengths in this project. I enjoyed the generation of ideas, the opportunity to learn quickly and introduce new things into the project, as well as rely on all my previous rich background. 6 months of studying marketing, my design experience and my experience for this project in how to create a website, which visual to choose, which texts to write on the site, how to promote the site, how to use social networks were very useful to me. I liked to discuss ideas with colleagues, negotiate, come up with ideas together, get feedback and improve this project. Therefore, I have great satisfaction from the work done, even if at times it was very difficult to combine it with my usual work at school. Without any doubt, this project turned out to be very successful and I received a letter of thanks from the director, which is very nice, and I also managed to show my best skills and acquire new ones.