Kalysha Clark

I hosted my first program at NC State last night. I talked about it in a previous blog post where I mentioned that I had received a grant for it.

We chose to show the movie Trade and host a discussion afterward about international human trafficking.

We managed to stay under our budget tremendously and only spent $30 of the $50 we were given. We bought drinks and popcorn, we ordered the movie on Amazon, we printed flyers, and we made a Facebook event page. The event was sent out in lots of email circulars, including WISE, CSLEPS, and Chancellor's Leadership Program.

Everything was going smoothly.

Until the day before.

Kristine (the other girl running the program) and I thought it would be a good idea to have a "guest" speaker to host the discussion because we didn't know too much about human trafficking. A friend had given me the email of a girl who she knew was involved with a lot of human trafficking research. I contacted her (a week or so before) and she had recommended that we show Trade, since it was originally planned that we would show Taken. She said Trade was a better depiction. She was excited about our event and wanted to speak but wasn't actually able to because of time conflicts. So she gave me the email of another girl who would be interested. I contacted her (a few days before the program) and told her the plan. She decided to watch the movie herself and felt like some scenes may be too graphic if there were any sexual violence survivors at the program.

So she contacted the woman who had given our grant (the woman who leads the Chancellor's program) basically behind my back to tell her that she was concerned about the movie. I was then contacted by the leader of the Chancellor's program to tell me that we should give our viewers the number of the Rape and Sexual Violence Phone Line, which I felt was appropriate.

Then the girl who was supposed to speak said she felt like we should have someone from the counseling center on campus or from the women's center come to the showing. I called and called but no one was available (especially the day before!). The counselor's center recommended we reschedule, which was just not an option.

The girl who was supposed to speak and the head of the program were going to talk to each other and contact me. They never did. So I went on with the program. We seriously only had six people, including myself and Kristine. Only one girl who attended wasn't a close friend of either me or Kristine. So we had terrible turnout. I still gave the disclaimer and we provided the phone number. I also gave a verbal warning before any graphic scenes occurred.

And the girl who was supposed to speak? Never even showed up.

This event was supposed to give me and Kristine opportunities to be leaders on campus. I felt like it was hard to lead because everyone else was telling me how to do it. And they were piling it all on me the day before.

If I learned anything from this event, I learned:
-Watch a movie before you plan to show it to others, even if someone knowledgeable recommended it.
-Don't depend on others to come through with something. After all, sometimes you can only count on yourself.
-Don't expect things to go exactly as planned because they never do. (We had some technical difficulties with the projector and had the start the movie 15 minutes late.)

All in all, we educated a few people about the topic, so we did what we were supposed to. But I can't help but think this program wasn't exactly "successful".

Hopefully we'll get 'em next time.