Dear Friends,
For a long time, we have been thinking about organizing a fundraiser which will raise money for a non-profit charity in Bangladesh and help raise the profile of Bangladeshi community at Purdue. We believe that the 16th Annual Global Fest at Morton Community Center, West Lafayette, provides a unique opportunity for us, but we need the commitment of many helping hands.
Global Fest is organized by the city of West Lafayette on September 4th at Morton Community Center, to celebrate diversity in this community. Traditionally, local vendors and international clubs from Purdue rent booths, where they sell goods or food items to raise money for their organization. Since 3000-5000 people are estimated to attend the event, it is possible to raise a reasonable amount of money.
At the moment, our plan is to have a food booth at Global Fest from10am-9pm on Saturday, September 4th, where we will sell snack items like chop, singara, bora, chola, pitha and sweets (the menu has not been fixed yet). Whatever money we make, will be donated to a charitable organization and we have a few options at the moment. Arman bhai has already contacted people in Hridoy Bangladesh (courtesy of Nazmun Nahar Apa), where the money can be used to provide scholarship to meritorious student in need. Tonmoy knows people in an organization that supports autistic children in Bangladesh, so that is another option. We are open to other ideas as well. If enough people are interested, then we can also have cultural booth and they are available free of cost. We also plan to have posters and fliers to highlight different aspects of Bangldesh.
The cost of reserving a spot for the booth is approximately $100, so we will have to make a profit of at least $100 to break even. I am pretty confident that we will be able to raise a significant amount of money.
As you can imagine, an event like this involves a huge amount of work, so we desperately need your help. At the moment, we need to know how many people are interested to help and we will only go through with the event if enough people commit to help us. You have until the end of July to make a decision. Even if you cannot commit to help, please help us by advertising to your friends, lab mates and course mates.
As you prepare to sign up for this event, please take some time to go through your schedule and ensure that you will be available during this time. Also, it will be the middle of Ramadan so think about your religious commitments as well. i would argue that doing charity during the middle of Ramadan is truly celebrates the spirit of the month. And, for the cooks there is some hassle of doing the cooking at a health department approved kitchen (Purdue village community center kitchen is approved). However, we plan to make life easy for the cooks by the doing their grocery shopping for them and have everything available in the central kitchen.
As for other announcements, we plan on organizing an informational meeting for the participants at the beginning of August. We will take all pending decisions during that meeting. We have to complete all the paperwork regarding the booth by the beginning of August.
Finally a word about the blog, I decided to create this blog for our event so that we can have a centralized discussion without cluttering our mailbox. Please feel free to share your ideas to make it a better event. I will try to update this page frequently with emerging details.
Sincerely,
