Care for Dogs Fair, Part II, and recycling

The days have flown by. It’s already Friday, the end of the week. I imagine we’re all relaxing at home right now. Well, I’m here again (Yu) just with an update post on our fair today and R&S updates.

Care for Dogs
The day began with my voice blaring from the P.A system. It is an uncanny feeling, really, to hear yourself talking in a relatively quiet room, and hear your voice again, much louder, from an outside source. The announcement was to thank everyone who bought something for Care for Dogs yesterday, and that they are really helping these dogs. I did remind them, however, that the best way to help was to adopt one of these dogs and give them a warm loving home.

Lunchtime I met with Ally once again to get more things to sell, and she came with a huge bag of stuffed animals — the ones we ran out of yesterday — that I kept stock of in the office. They were adorable as always, and I think I must’ve been hallucinating from my rather small lunch (a box of guava) but I saw sadness in their eyes. Yes, I must’ve been hallucinating! Dogs and their eyes.. hmm.

Unfortunately today, even though we set up our ‘booth’ right in the middle of the hall, I think most people had already had their share of buying the little doll pups, and we didn’t get as many people. Some asked if there would still be a sale on Tuesday — as Monday is a holiday — and I could only give an unsteady reply. However, since the merchandise won’t be going anywhere, I’m sure we’ll be able to get a little more out of them.

Talked to Mr. Troy, and after discovering that next week would only have three days, we rescheduled the shelter visit for the week after. Thank you as always to Fun, Betty, Jackie and Eve for helping out with the booth (if I didn’t mention someone I’m sorry), and all the kind people who donated something for our cause.

Recycling
Mr. M, our regular recycling guy, came today to pick up the plastic bottles and paper, and we got 92 baht this week. I feel rather bad that I couldn’t help him put the plastic bins back, for really, it isn’t his job, but hopefully next week we’ll do better.

Canvas Bags
Wanted to head to Concept (the design shop that is doing our bags) today after sending Betty home but my mom was too busy to go. Hopefully I’ll head there this Saturday to pick up the sample (I really hope it’s there waiting for me!) and get our design on file to put up here.

That’s all for R&S updates today. Website still under construction, so I’m writing posts to nobody at the moment, really. Next week I hope we can discuss World Watershed Day, Movie Night, and the planned social.

 

Care for Dogs Fair, Part I

Hey everyone, it’s Yu here, just updating with some pictures and what’s been going on lately.

Today Roots and Shoots held what has been unofficially dubbed the “Care for Dogs Fair”. Yesterday Ally Taylor from the Care for Dogs organization came to the school at lunch and dropped off two boxes of things to sell; these included ceramics, doggie dolls, keychains, mobiles (not phones!), postcards, and several posters and signposts for us to put up, and of course, two rather large donation boxes. Most of the R&S members were having a pizza party just then, but surprisingly enough, that day we managed to earn 1,212 baht in donations and sales!

This morning I arrived at school with a metal grille of some sort I had taken from my defunct oven, and Ms. Oil, the school’s secretary, helped me put up the little keychains on the grille with the ingenious use of paperclips (thanks Yuu for suggesting that!) and we displayed it in the office window. From right that moment, the keychains started selling like hotcakes — something me nor Ms. Oil was prepared for. People kept buying the adorable little dolls throughout the morning, until lunch, when Ms. Oil told me that she couldn’t sell anymore things. I feel quite bad — her whole morning was disrupted.

Lunchtime we had a meeting to take a stock list of all the things we had. By this time we’d pretty much run out of keychains or dog dolls! At 12:30 R&S members met in the front of the office, then moved up to Ms. Elissa’s room. Pretty much everyone except for Mr. Troy was there, and they all helped to make our stock list. Monika left her pencil there, but I hope she got it back.

After school was when the real fair started, but by then there wasn’t much to sell. I had Eve and Jackie help me carry the boxes of things to the canteen, where I thought would be a good place to set-up. Well, I was wrong! Despite much interest in the first ten or twenty minutes, it started to get quiet really fast, so we packed up and headed to the front of the school building, where Eve, Jackie, Nok, Gale and Dolly helped to sell things to the little kids and the many teachers there. Mr. Rory helped point out an interesting detail about the metal dog paper holders we were selling, but I don’t think I should mention it here!

Kaimook also dropped by to tell me she had collected the paper from the elementary building, so recycling should go well tomorrow. She looked really tired, and she probably must be, dragging a load of paper up and down three floors!

By about 3:40 we decided to clear up, as a lot of people had already gone home, and we had sold the majority of our things during the day, before the sale. Eve and Gale helped me count the money, and here, what we’ve all been waiting for, is the total of what we’ve made!

5,448 baht! Wow!

I can’t believe we’ve made so much! I called Ally to bring more merchandise for tomorrow when we’ll have the second day of our dog fair. Tomorrow I hope we can discuss what we want to do with this money we’ve raised! You can see the pictures of our fair in the gallery.

 

Roots and Shoots’ First Post!

This is the day that the NIS Roots and Shoots weblog was created! We are opening up to the world! Here, hopefully, we can write about what our club has been doing to fulfill our goals as an R&S group, and keep on updating. This, I think, will also be a good way for our group to look back on all the activities we’ve done.

Let’s hope this comes along well!