Skinsy Needs Your Brain. Now.

I need you awesome YWSers' brains right now. You see, next summer, I'll be spending a month in Ecuador, South America, to help poor communities, build houses for them, trek around mountains and junk, live without phones, internet, home comforts, and generally gain some life experience.

I'm going with a company called Outlook Expeditions and here's their site if you want a browse: Outlookexpeditions.com What I'll be doing is explained in more detail there.

The hitch: it costs £3,500.

The biggest hitch: I'll be without YWS for an entire month.

The good news is that so long as things go according to plan, around 70% of that will be raised through many events and what not. What does this have to do with me? you ask. Well, because I know you lot are a smart bunch of guys and gals, I thought it would be a good idea to ask if anyone has any suggestions to as of how to raise this money.


This is what I have so far:

- Sponsorship (Sponsored walks, runs e.t.c. If anyone has any good sponsorship ideas, then shoot.
- Doing odd jobs for people (Washing cars, cleaning houses, mowing grass e.t.c.)
- Having a cake stand in school once a week (Yes, my school is that cool)
- Saving up my birthday and Christmas money
- Holding events like dances/discos
- Car boot sales/Yard sales
- Dog Walking
- Babysitting


If anyone has any other ideas, please let me me know. The more, the merrier, even if they're just ideas for sponsorships or something. Also, if anyone's happened to have ever done something like this, be sure to share your experiences and what not with me. I'm a lazy kid who appreciates her home comforts, see, so the more prepared I am for this, the better.

So yeah, get those brains frying and spit your ideas at me! Or I'll have to get Paul on you. Paul can be violent.

Thanks, guys.

You'll be spending a month in Ecuador. The other two months could be spent doing lemonade/cookie/yard sales. What I do is buy a bunch of cute bags, necklaces, nail polishes, rings, bracelets etc from Forever 21 (you can use whatever equivalent you have in the UK) for about one to two dollars, then I sell them for four dollars. I dunno if it would work for you but I made over two hundred dollars last summer in one week. This works especially well if you live in a busy area, near buses or trains, parks or even shopping areas.

If you're good/decent at drawing, you can take commissions. The going rate for quick sketches is usually ~2-5 USD, with more elaborate works fetching higher prices (of course :P).

You can make quite a pretty penny from doing portraits, and if you've got no competition, you can charge from anywhere between 10-15 USD per portrait. Rates, of course, vary from location to location; those happen to be the going rates in my area. If you have a local arts society or an art department at your local university, they'll have a good idea of the rates in your area, and they'll usually be willing to appraise your work if you bring samples.

How about writing short stories or something for people?

My school is offering something similar for ne next year, so I was pondering this. I think that really the best way to get money is through food, if I'm honest. People in our school doing it this year bought Krispy Kreme doughnuts en masse and then sold them. I would not try too many sponsored walks etc if I were you - I do a load for charity and even then it's hard to get people to donate, so it may fall flat if you're doing it to fund a trip as well.

organize a really big yard sale with your friends, but make them all give you 10-20% of the profits. Whatever you do, DON'T collect bottles. I wasted 2 hours collecting smelly beer cans and I made $23.60, equivlant to £16.58 not worth it.

First of all, EEEE! I've been in Ecuador and Peru for the past three months! I'm sure you'll love it. About the roughing it part, it may take some getting used to. The heat just makes it all harder (unless you're going to the Andes, which is awesome).

Admitedly, for the most part I've not been reaallly in 'the jungle' or anything, but my advice is to expect to make compromises. Which I know you know already, but it's a lot harder when you're staying in someone's house with no running water/plumbing and there are bugs everywhere and it's raining and there's a leak over your bead.... Anyway, people in the US especially but the UK as well are really used to living with a lot of things they just don't need, and it's easy to sortof say "OMG! I can't believe I can't flush toilet paper in any of the toilets/drink the water/take a hot shower! I demand that...." and so on, but most of the world is living the same way, and it turns out you can get by with a lot less than you think.

As a side note, please be careful if you go to the Amazon. In the Spanish school I was at in Peru, a student went boating there and they were taken over by river pirates. Yes, river pirates. They shot a passenger and one of the crew for resisting, then marched them all off the boat and took their money. (Not their passports or anything, luckily.) Then the boat captains told them they couldn't look at their luggage and THEY stole their clothing. He wasn't even too upset about it. So, yeah--also expect some corruption. The leader of Ecuador is going on a dictatorship-like path, and the police force is a bit corrupt as well. (Then again, I'm biased--they're holding our computer hostage illegaly in Customs. XD). Still, I don't want to scare you off--the South American culture in general is one of the warmest, most friendly, and helpful that we've encountered in our whole trip, and I'll be sad to leave it. I also think it's great that you're going to be doing this project.

But. The actual focus of your post was the fundraising. I don't really know about that, but I think I'll second Aqua--people'll buy anything processed, packaged and bad for them. XD Buy cheap cookies or something, and sell them.

Good luck!

Lupis

Anyway. I