Pencils of Promise

PoP’s Multi City Event Challenge: Your City- Your Challenge- Your Impact!

The following entry was a collaborative response, written by PoP team members Matt Dominici, Bethant Brichta, Adam Tichauer, Stephanie Dang, Danielle Keen, Rebecca Sholitan, and Veronica Fischmann, to the great job all of our PoP supporters did in helping our Muti City Challenge become such a great success!

It was an impossible idea: to have an event across the world, uniting hundreds of people to support one fantastic cause.  But Pencils of Promise is an organization that doesn’t believe that things are impossible. It is possible to bring education to the children who deserve it, who crave it- for starters, in Laos, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. It is possible to hold a Multi City Event Challenge joining 7 cities: New York City, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and 49 other locations around the world and to have it be a ground-breaking success.

MCE in New York

The numbers are in and so is the feedback. This year’s first annual Multi City Event Challenge raised over $60,000 in a single night. But this wasn’t only a fundraising challenge; it was about bringing the presence of PoP into our supporters’ communities.

Planning an event of this scale in 3 months was difficult. A lot of hard work went into this event: from staff at PoP Home Base (in New York City), to the volunteer presidents in each of the PoP 7 cities, to each and every person who created their own “PoP Indie” events. In the end, the hours of hard work definitely paid off.

Pencil Drop Table @ San Diego

Each city’s event reflected the individual people who worked to create it. In San Diego, the MC Event drew about 375 guests, including 35 medical students and residents. Guests took over all floors of the venue, from the downstairs lobby area called the Living Room to the Beach, the all-sand rooftop lounge. In Dallas, there was no sand involved, but they had signature orange Promise martinis, PoP Chips, and Pizza Hut pizza to accompany our PoP pencil drop and fundraising stations.  Guests two-stepped, toasted PoP with champagne, and entered for raffle prizes, all to raise money for Pencils of Promise projects. Boston’s open bar kept the drinks flowing and when the partygoers weren’t busy checking out the new gear designed by Southern Tide, there were more than enough activities to keep them occupied. The New York City event had over 400 supporters dressed to the nines, dancing until the wee hours of the morning for a cause that is now near and dear to many new hearts.

Across all events, though, we did have a few things in common. The Pencil Drop was

Pencil Drop Table @ Dallas

popular across theboard; people bought either red or yellow pencils (red signifying a contribution of $25, yellow $1) and dropped them in different buckets to support one of five efforts: Build, Train, Sustain, SHINE, and Fellows. There were also screens in each city with live streaming among the parties.

As a large mega-event that was taking place in separate locations across the world, the MC event couldn’t have been more exciting, but the most impressive thing about all of it was knowing that we were all     working together to make education accessible for all. It felt like more than just a party; it felt like we were really starting a movement. November 13th was what PoP is all about – the 49% coming together to make an impact on the 51% of our mission. The $60,000 we raised will enable Pencils of Promise to educate at least 86 more children with full basic primary education. One of our upcoming projects in Tapasle, Nicaragua will be dedicated to Philanthro Productions for their collaborative fundraising efforts in our first-ever Multi City Event Challenge.

MCE in Denver

The Multi City Event Challenge was not just a challenge to see which city could raise the most money, it was a challenge to help as many children as possible and it was a celebration of what we can all accomplish together. Thank you so much to everyone who was involved.

Tags: Adam Braun, education, fundraising, Global Education, Laos, Multi-city Event 2010, Nicaragua, non-profits, Pencils of Promise, Pha Theung, philanthropy, PoP, Social Good, The PoP Movement