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4-H Meeting
A month ago, we had a meeting during a 4-H science class where the mom's talked about how we wanted to handle our club meetings. Originally they were set up so that the first hour would be a meeting, the second hour would be for the kids to work on their project books together and in between we would have a snack. Well, the snacks quickly fell by the wayside, they took too much of our limited time and people kept forgetting to bring stuff or they didn't even come (this is a new group and definitely having birthing pains).
The problem with working on project books was that the children are not working on the same topic. Some were doing animals, some robotics, some woodworking...and on the list goes. So when we were discussing how we would handle the next club meeting, I suggested we not do project books, but instead spend that time working on the community projects we have planned as we are a community service oriented club. I was expecting that my suggestion would not be well received. Surprisingly, the other mothers immediately chimed in and said their kids were working on their project books at home and they would much rather spend that time at 4-H working on our community service projects. Yeah...one for me!
Then today, we had another meeting. The kids were being taught by the Extension Agent about electricity and the club leader needed to ask us some things. We have a bake sale coming up in a couple of weeks and she was finalizing details on that. The purpose of the bake sale is to raise money to help ship the care packages to the soldiers in Iraq. Then, she said, we will start our next fundraiser on November first and we will be selling candles. WHAT!? I am an anti-fundraiser person. I don't like asking people for money. And we don't really have the contacts. So I asked her why we were raising all of these funds for. She told me things that previous clubs had used the money for...to support their community projects, to pay for shipping of the care packages, to give a gift to a guest speaker, that sort of thing. Then I completely put my neck out and said, I despise fundraisers and listed my reasons for it.
I said I would much rather do bake sales or car washes or things of that nature than try to sell candles and what not and us receive very little money from it. I expected the tomatoes to start flying, but was tickled when the other moms jumped in and said...I agree! So we are going to do a yard sale in January and will probably throw in a bake sale too (guess who is in charge....yep, me...and I even told them about my previous two yard sale disasters!).
So I am tickled that we aren't going to be doing fund raisers ad I share these stories not to show that I like things best when they all go my way (which of course I do, but that is another story). My purpose is to say 'don't be afraid to speak up, because it is likely others are feeling the same way you are!'
Speak up! Others are just waiting for someone to say what everyone is thinking!
