Today was the first day of stylist recruitment! Unfortunately, only one other person besides Denise, Sara, and myself showed up. And that was Susan, our treasurer. So rounding up the numbers was unsuccessful. 

However, the actual stylist recruitment was pretty successful! We covered the Hyde Park/Rookwood/Oakley area and heard some positive feedback from a couple of salons. There were two salons who were very interested so I'm excited to see how much they can help.

We still have another round of recruitment to go so I'll have to schedule that soon. 

I'm struggling with the leadership portion of this event, mostly because I don't feel like I have anyone to lead or to coach! There were many interested people who came to the meeting but they don't actually want to help. I sent out a message asking if anyone was interested in taking a leadership role so I could help them with that, but I haven't gotten a response. It's not enough to just hold meetings to make announcements... if people are really that interested, they can just read an email. I think I won't have meetings unless there is something to do at the meeting, like color fliers or post them around campus, or pass out candy canes in Langsam. Actually, that's exactly what I'll do. Our next meeting will be Monday, December 10 and it will just be us going around passing out candy canes and information. 

We had our first meeting this Monday! I think it went pretty well. We introduced the Beautiful Lengths program to everyone who attended and explained the event and how they could help. 

But unfortunately, we're no closer to solving the problem with CAC. And I barely know what the problem is, let alone understand it, but I'll let them handle it all since we're in no hurry because...

Last week, I attended the new student organization workshop and met Dr. Terri Hurdle, the program coordinator for student organizations. She reassured us about all of our worries with the registration process and promised to work with us to get what we needed. Huge sigh of relief after that meeting. 

And even more recently, Circle K International has officially decided to sponsor us so we can reserve the event space!!!! Yay! I'm going to wait until we meet with the President of their group next week until we actually reserve the space, but it's so nice to just know someone say "yes."

As this project will (hopefully) become an honors experience for me, I need to start focusing on developing good leadership technique. I chose to focus on a coaching leadership style because I think that it will be the best route for the development of the group and the future of this campaign at UC. Denise Zimmerman (vice-president) and I split the whole group (there's 20 people!) into three categories: marketing, fundraising, and graphic design. Because I'm officially the President, I will have my say in all three groups, but focus on directly leading the marketing team. Sara Gaugler, a key member of our team, will take charge of fundraising since she has experience in that area.

We're stuck in a bunch of red tape and it could severely hinder our event... I just found out we won't be a fully registered group with the ability to reserve a room until at least spring semester, since our adviser has to go through training and those sessions have concluded for the fall semester.

And we've learned a little more about why CAC has been hesitating. There is a problem between Pantene and American Cancer Society that I don't know much about, but CAC is working through it with their ACS staff partner. We'll see what comes of it.

And the Great Hall is already booked, which is where we had originally planned to have the event. 

Our alternative is to go to TUC 400A-C and open up the rooms, but it looks like those might be booked too.

We could go to the rec center but that's $50/hr per court, so including set-up and tear-down time... $500. We would need funding for that so that also delays our timeline for reserving a room.

I'm exploring other options now for groups to sponsor us and reserve a room for us... We'll see how it goes.

Otherwise we're really in trouble.

Submitted the application to SALD! Now, we wait...

Things aren't moving. People aren't cooperating the way I had hoped. If we keep waiting on other people, this event may never happen, which is why we have decided to become an official, independent group on campus! 

Woo!!

Except that there's a lot of work involved. I've been going through the application process, drafting a constitution and bylaws, and coming up with a roster. I'm just waiting on a couple M numbers before I submit everything.The review process will take 2-3 weeks, after which we can FINALLY reserve our event space!!! Which means we can actually start marketing. 

Plus, it'll be great in the future when we won't have to rely on anyone else for help getting started. It'll be on our own terms.

We're so close to really making things happen!

So it's time to really start putting this event together... And while I'm completely thrilled about it and absolutely can't wait to get going, I've encountered some obstacles. One of the challenges I've been running into is a lack of communication with people in almost every way. I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to just get people to answer their emails! Being away on co-op definitely isn't helping, either. I'm not on campus to talk to people face-to-face, and that's a problem.

I have so many great ideas, and luckily I have a wonderful and supportive team who is just as excited about this as me and really wants to see the event happen. Now we just need a little bit more manpower... I've posted an advertisement in the Center for Community Engagement's Weekly Service Update, so we'll see who's interested from that group.

Before anything can really happen, we need to set an event date and reserve a location! But because Beautiful Lengths isn't an official student group, we need to "piggyback" on another group. Last year, that was Colleges Against Cancer. Right now, I'm in the process of getting their stamp of approval once more. I'm pretty confident that they won't have any objection since they seem very willing to help and did this with us last year, but before I can get meetings scheduled and rooms reserved, I need an official "yes." Unfortunately, I haven't heard much in the way of a response from them...

One of my team members is also on the Colleges Against Cancer Relay for Life planning committee so I will need to leverage her more in order to get the kind of cooperation and partnership we would really like to have from them.

Marketing is going to be the biggest challenge for this event. It's extremely difficult to get women to part with their hair, even for such a great cause. Hair is part of our identity--it defines us. Such a dramatic change can be a very emotional process, so it's a very delicate issue to promote. Even recruiting stylists to volunteer at the event is difficult. We're asking them to come in on their day off and work for free. Not many people are willing to do that. Everyone involved in this campaign is incredibly selfless, and it's very admirable. 

Now we just have to get things moving!!