“Randomness”, the only word that describes my Rotaract journey which started in 2018 when “Random task manager” inside my head instructed me to take the left turn in Thapathali towards Rotary building while returning back home from my campus at Pulchowk. All I wanted was friends from new fields, different perspective with different priorities and it truly has been an awesome journey when it comes to knowing entirely different kinds of people who are now like a family for me ( though I’m like tourist there these days due to my schedule
). Events and Meetings are two heavy weights that to some extent define Rotarct for new comers. It’s the way we learn new things and bond together by either Participating or by even co-ordinating the events. Participating was not a problem though but having joined Rotarct for long period, I had not co-ordinated any event and I felt like it’s time to explore how it feels like to co-ordinate events from Rotaract. So, I took a charge and decided to co-ordinate an event and here’s the whole account to the experience I had which I have tried summing up with some points:
Selecting the Event:
Basically, we had a pool of events planned for the year and everyone was asked to give their names in respective events they were interested in. So, having my mind made up to co-ordinate an event no matter what, I scrolled all over the list and the event that for me felt best suited was “Rotaract Technical Session” as word Technical attracts me the most being an Engineer and Professsional Development avenue attracts me the most in Rotaract.Â
Planning the Event:Â
I almost forgot about the event for months and suddenly our PDD (Professional Development Director) created the group chat with club president and my “co-coordinator” to discuss about the event 15 days prior to the event. Then we had some meetings to decide about the modality of the event with following conclusions and Reasons:
| SN | Points | Decision | Reasons |
| 1 | Platform | Online Platform | Covid-19 |
| 2 | Schedule | Aug 19th 20th and 22nd | Had Teej on 21st and had to finish the event by 23rd |
| 3 | Time | 2hrs a Day | We didn’t want anyone to feel bored as if they were in long lectures ! |
For any kind of Event, It’s very essential to have a very appealing content to attract and hold the participants. As I’m not a mind reader to know what everyone in the club would like and were expecting from the event, So I decided to conduct a kind of Feasibility study and called everyone in the club individually so that everyone would feel that opinion matters. To keep matter controlled, I gave two different options to chose between for the event. Below is the report I prepared after taking everyone’s choice and opinion:
Other Members were contacted by my counterpart for co-ordinating this event. After this Feasibility study we were quite sure that our members wanted some basic Techhnical Session and then we planned to conduct basic one for this time and a more specific one on Photoshop on Rotaract Skill week as suggested by Rtr. Chetan. So we decided to include basic Technical Session for the following:
MS office Package ( Word, Excel, Powerpoint)
Google Package ( Docs, Sheet, Forms)
Nitro PDF
Email Management ( As asked by PDD,2020)
Blogging Basics ( As asked by ISD, 2020)
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Finding Session’s Hosts and Tutor:
The Event was all planned and we needed the hosts for the technical session. we opted to have two hosts as load would be very high for a single tutor to teach all of this. We Already had Abhijhan who had been Tutoring in previous technical session and I took challenge in my own hand to teach along with him (as I love teaching). So we then divided the works as following work divisional Matrix:
| Â | Rashik | Abhijhan |
| Tasks | MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, PDF Nitro, Blogging Basics | MS word , Google Docs, Google Sheet , Google Forms, Email Management |
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Marketing:
Undoubtedly, Marketing is a very essential Part of any project. Though we confined the project to the club members and some guest and didn’t send any invites to other clubs, we still had to have a good no of participants in the event as my ego wouldn’t let me have my first co-ordinated event to have low attendance. So I decided to have this matter on my hand too . I had to design a flyer but I didn’t prefer Photoshop too much and didn’t have much needed skills for photoshop. So I decided to go with my favorite App for Graphic Design, Microsoft Powerpoint ( Thank you Bill Gates 😉 )and created a flyer and looked something like this ( worked for me):
And then all we had to do is share about the event and it was not a problem as every member of the rotaract family decorated their stories pinkish with this flyer.
Finals:
Then it was the time for the execution and obviously I was nervous somewhere in back of my mind as it was not only my first Co-ordinated event on Rotaract event but also first event where I was about to show my teaching skills in Rotaract that too virtually which I find very difficult than real life interaction. So I prepared myself with slides and looked good with some formal dress so I would get good vibes to have things done smoothly and it helped alot. I was very much surprised with the attendance which was very much high than I expected. Most of them were guests, so all of them got a chance to know a little about rotaract. I was also very happy to see some of my friends and juniors from my campus . The Instagram and Facebook Story based Market really worked. Coming to the attendance, following was the Stats from the event:Â
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| August 19 | Â |
| Guest | 14 |
| RAC BOD | 9 |
| RAC GM | 12 |
| Total | 35 |
| Â August 20 | Â |
| Total Guests | 20 |
| RAC BODs | 6 |
| RAC GMs | 9 |
| Total Attendance | 35 |
| Â August 22 | Â |
| Total Guests | 11 |
| RAC BODs | 9 |
| RAC GMs | 11 |
| Total Attendance | 31 |
Among those participants there were altogether 53 different people involved in different days which really boosted my confidence in planning and co-ordinating the Rotaract events.
Feedbacks:
Coming to the qualitative analysis , After the completion of event I opened a feedback form and asked everyone for the feedback regarding the event which had fairly good reponse than I expected.
I wish :
I wish we could organize such events physically rather than virtually. I think it’d be better if we could conduct such events physically and more interactively. I also wished there’d be more feedbacks ( was only 25% of Participation) as it’s the only mechanism to develop ourselves in future as better co-ordinators.
Conslusion:
To conclude, It was a very awesome experience for me to be co-ordinating this event. Everyone was very helpful and made works very easy. Organizing part became very much easy due to involvement of everyone from the board.
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