Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Carnival of Friendships.

I am behind in posting the blog. Sorry! Thank you to all who check in with me every Thursday and remind me to keep going.

Last two months have been amazing and very busy. Amazing because a husband-wife team at school decided to become the chairs for the school carnival and asked if I wanted to join the team. They had just one condition, it had to be the best carnival the school and the community had ever seen. Their enthusiasm was infectious and I joined the team.

We then found five new members for different tasks and together the team created the vision: A carnival that celebrates the community we live in.  Our theme: Hawaiian. Come on, its CA, and California does not think beyond Hawaii and Mexico :)




Long story short, it was "THE EVENT" of the year. The most amazing carnival the school had seen. After 1000+ visitors and 6 hours of fun and laughter, we took a sigh of relief and thanked our stars secretly for it ran like a well oiled machine.

Personally to me, few things popped out besides the success of the carnival.

First, it is true; leadership can make or break a team. This was a voluntary event and effort. There were no performance appraisals and paychecks attached, yet for the team leadership to hold hands and find solutions was the extra step that walked us to success.

Second, friendships can spring in the most unknown circumstances. I met some new parents in a high stress environment. We all had our targets. Mine was to be the "on-call ATM machine." Every time an activity got added, we needed more cash :) And thankfully some one up there was watching out for me, cash flowed in.  The tickets team had the target of selling 800 tickets at the minimum. We found two pretty girls :) who not only sold the tickets but did it so efficiently that not a dime was lost.  An event such as this cannot run with 8 pairs of hands, we needed at the minimum hundred pairs of hands to make this happen. In comes our volunteer manager, a new parent to school, she did not know too many parents and yet she made it happen with sheer persistence and dedication.  In addition to this we had team members effortlessly managing the heavy equipments, concessions and more.

Through all this I know I made some good memories and found some good friends. I hope they feel the same way :)

Last but not the least, realized that community is an amazing thing. When tapped the right way, it comes together to support and makes the impossible, possible.

That is exactly what this carnival was. When we started the journey, we said to ourselves, we will be lucky if we can sell 500 tickets, we will be lucky if we can find 1 corporate sponsor, we will be lucky if we can find 10 vendors to come host booths. Well, we sold 1000+ tickets, found 3 corporate sponsors and 20 vendors.






The community belief and support motivated us to do more and take it to the best level possible.

Dedicating this blog in honor of the amazing people I have met in the last two months.  

Oh, if you think I am bragging.. you know what they say, "if you've done it, it ain't braggin." 







Be the "Aloha" you wish to be!

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