Accepting Failure
Being part of B164 in AMAL Academy, we had been assigned the task of fundraising for the Edhi Foundation. The purpose of the task was to challenge our problem-solving skills to accept failure. We are done with the task and finally reviewing it.
Experience
Our circle was nervous about this activity before discussing the activity as it was the first-ever experience to collect funds for a renowned organization named Edhi Foundation. When we started working together, we approached a crowd of 500 and found that it was an amazing journey of 2 weeks. Few people gave us a positive response. Among them, facilitators appeared as two groups. One of them was here to donate, and the other group helped us to spread our words. Some people showed concerns by sharing their doubts, and the rest did not even bother to respond. The third situation was critical and heartbreaking to be ignored, as it was our first experience to listen ‘No’. After getting a rejection, doing nothing for the foundation gave us a feeling of guilt so, we gained courage from positive responses. We motivated ourselves to keep in mind that rejections are a part of life, and we must learn from them.
Methodology
Keeping in view the ongoing pandemic situation and social distancing, we adopted the idea to digitalize our activity and spreading the words via social media (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram). Our circle was sub-divided into two teams; marketing and finance. The marketing team was assigned the responsibility of making an aesthetic poster. The responsibility of the finance team was to check and balance funds. It was strategized to collect funds via Jazz Cash, EasyPaisa, and Bank account. After the poster and caption were ready, each member broadcast it to his family, family, and strangers. We approached 500 people as a whole team among them 360 were in our contact and 140 were strangers for us. We reached out to two organizations to ask them for funding; one of them was Funzoft Solutions and the other was Haris & Company.
Challenges
Only 11 fellows responded positively and we were rejected by 489 people on day 1. Those who showed optimism were in doubt and asked us various questions. Some of those questions were:
- Will you be responsible to donate all funds to Edhi Foundations?
- Is this authentic or your team is doing it to make money from us?
- This may be a scam to collect a handsome amount as these account holders owe fund accounts.
One of the organizations, Haris & Company donated us to Edhi foundation. Funzoft did not consider our request for funding and the owner told me that donations have already been made in different trusts, therefore, his team will donate directly to Edhi Foundation rather than donating to a third party.
The lack of trust from our audience was a major challenge for us and this challenging situation made the task more interesting as we were able to push out the creative person inside us. When we did not find any satisfactory answer to the aforementioned questions individually, we decided to have a group meeting again to brainstorm the solutions. We critically analyzed the situation once more and put our efforts to find ways to satisfy the queries of addresses to build trust. We overcame this challenge by negotiating with people and explaining to them the noble cause behind it. We assured them to provide a transaction receipt on completing our project.
Kya Hasil Hua
Providing the evidence helped to us in gaining the confidence of our audience. They not only donated us but shared our agenda with their circles. We ended the activity by getting an amount of Rs. 21610. When we displayed the receipt to our audience, we received a total of Rs. 28110 as a result of building trust.
The interesting experience of collecting funds has taught us that how to face challenges and accept failures. We learned that not everybody will listen to us every time, so we must give our best and keep on trying. Failures are the part of our life, giving us the lessons and taking those lessons on a serious note, we can achieve our goals. No success can be achieved without facing failures. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not Final, Failure is not Fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”. My team welcomed failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.
