Share A Talent

Blog 2

Mega project that was assigned to us now demands practical application of the idea at full throttle. We as a team are working from day 1 to use our idea to create an impact on concrete grounds. Like every new initiative we too faced certain challenges and then dealt with them to the extent possible. Coming from diverse backgrounds we identified the strengths of each other and then assigned tasks accordingly. This strategy and cordial behavior of each one of us enabled us to unleash our potentials to the fullest.

This blog will revolve around the recent progress that we made, challenges faced during the implementation of the project, solutions to cope up with those challenges, it’s impact and finally concluding with the way forward(sustainability).

Progress

In terms of progress we have grown a lot since we submitted the first blog. We have prepared 4 courses so far that we are offering to those who are fifteen years of age and above. Secondly, we have opened the registrations and so far got potential 10 participants for our first batch. Moving forward, our main Facebook page of “Share A Talent” has grown up to 122 followers whereas a parallel Instagram page has 41 followers so far. This Instagram page is for promotional purposes of the main page which has proved to be quite fruitful as it has channelized the followers from Instagram page to Facebook page successfully.

Now as each day passes by in the implementation of the project, our tasks are more clearly defined by actions. It’s a step towards a better picture of the responsibilities. Next we have designed our execution time framework for efficient running of the project. Additional features that we provide are; a WhatsApp number for customer support, an account to collect finance, a valid email address and an open inbox. Furthermore, we have asked many pages on social media for collaborating for promotion purposes. Kind of them to give us shout outs, which aided us to extend our reach.

Challenges & their Solutions

Challenges are part and parcel of any initiative taken whether on a smaller scale or a larger scale. On similar grounds we dealt with some issues too. One of the most prominent one was that we faced a poor response from people. A meager number of people registered after some days. It was also because we started from the scratch and it takes time to establish a name. Anyway then in order to cater this problem we changed our entire marketing strategy. We added some new incentives to attract more participants. Firstly, we informed people that we are going to donate half the cost of your registration to the Edhi Foundation. Secondly, we reduced the per head cost of the participants from Rs.200 to Rs.100. Thirdly, we had to extend the deadline for our registrations.

Another challenge that we had to tackle was the exceeding of time from our initial expected time frame. As our project is time bound so this was much of an alarming situation for all of us. As mentioned before our team coordination is good so we had a meeting to discuss this issue. We came to a conclusion that we’ll design more attractive posters to post to the public with the updates so we can engage more participants in our project. We extended our registration date for good. Then we rescheduled all the upcoming steps catering the delay as to when to deliver courses and when to start assessing the participants. We got responses in the last days before the deadline of the project.

Change in approach

As mentioned earlier, as part of the solution we had to change our marketing strategy to a whole 360 degrees. It wasn’t possible to start implementation unless we had a sound number of participants. For that purpose, we extended dates for registering in our courses. We also gave an incentive to the participants to pay only Rs.100 if they want to register but don’t want to take a certificate and in case they need one so only then they had to pay Rs.200. Next we made our posters more attractive than before and started asking everyone to share the link of our page in any two groups that you are part of and then send us the screenshots. This was all done to expand our reach. When people will get to know of our initiative only then will they be able to get themselves registered.

Impact Generated

Since we closed our registrations yesterday and successfully managed to get 10 potential participants so far. Now they are in the phase of submitting their registration charges. So from Monday we’ll give access to our first batch to our courses. In terms of impact we have contacted different platforms for promotional purposes namely @themag , @beingartistic and @glambloggers. They have given us shout outs. Once we’ll collect the revenue from our participants then we’ll donate half the amount to the Edhi Foundation so we expect to create an impact there too.

Sustainability

The best part about our mega project is that it all operates online which means that wherever we all will go still we can coordinate and run this project. We are a group of 6 dedicated individuals who are working as a team and exhibiting the best team work example so far. We’ll regularly follow-up on our page and endure that this life-long learning process continues.

The additional aspect that would sustain our project is that we encourage people to come forward and portray their talent in front of the world. In future we even plan to not charge the volunteers to ensure maximum participation and exchange of talents. We also plan to restrict the days of our classes on the weekends so that even when the pandemic is over and normal life is resumed, people can easily continue learning.

Presented by: (Amal Circle#2)