Frozen Yogurt And Fundraising

May 24 by Saachi Gupta

(Saachi in front of a poster about Girl Up in Red Mango.)

"Hello? Julio? This is Saachi, from the Girl Up Club at Millburn High School. You're hosting an event for us tonight! I was just calling with a few questions."

"What are you talking about?"

I paused my pacing and froze, fearing that I had merely dreamed that Millburn High School’s Girl Up Club was going to be hosting a fundraiser that night at Red Mango, the local frozen yogurt shop.

Luckily, it was not a dream! Our Girl Up Club would receive 20 percent of Red Mango's profits whenever a customer presented a flyer.

I went in an hour later to put up a poster about what Girl Up does, set up a poster with a QR code linking to the flyer, and hoped for the best.

While driving there, I received a text from the club's Press Secretary, Steven Yaffe, letting me know that the Millburn Patch, our community's online newspaper, had run an article about our event that night.

As I was heading back to my car, a man asked me what I was setting up flyers for.

I told him that they were for the Girl Up Club at Millburn High School that raises money for girls to attend school and to receive access to healthcare and safety.

He asked me why we were just raising money for girls.

I replied with a statistic that I learned at a Girl Up event in September, that when you invest in a girl, 90 percent of her earnings go back into her community; I told him that by supporting girls, we were working to provide everyone with the opportunities that they deserve.

In that moment I had taken a step towards achieving one of the Girl Up Club’s goals — spreading awareness about why helping women and girls is important.

The rest of the evening was a success.

The hours of promoting, sharing, posting, cajoling, convincing, and advertising were worth it; more than 110 people presented flyers, and members of the local community learned about Girl Up through the club members that were at Red Mango and through our poster at the store.

(Happy customers supporters a great cause.)