A collaborative reflection on our progress and barriers from Ben, Matt, Nelson and Sunny
In an effort to improve and educate peoples views on drug prevention, drug use and harm reduction, our group has come up with the idea to host an “open” forum with a panel of experts, each carrying a different view and experience in this field. The difference in this event we are organizing compared to similar events is that attendants will get to participate in discussions. Not only that, they will get to work with each other to generate a solution related to this topic at the event and receive feedback from our guests. On top of that, attendants will be put into contact with people required to get their ideas to become reality.
In focusing on the one of the main barriers, funding, we have noticed that a lot of businesses that are not normally involved with drugs are very hesitant to participate. Although businesses see this extra exposure as “free” advertising and improving public relations, they still want something back for it. For example, the bank that we have contacted have mentioned that they are willing to provide cheaper financing or free business accounts but as for actual financial assistance, we would need to provide them how they would benefit from this. Fortunately, this event is relatively low in cost and most of the costs involved can be covered by the ticket sales. However, any additional source of funding still helps and we are in the process of looking for alternate sources of funding.
A second barrier that our group is facing is the ability to make this a sustainable event. Our current idea is based on using a website for people that went to the event or anyone else interested in this topic to go and discuss their ideas and have annual events based on the “hot topics” in the website. However, this is based heavily on how successful the website is and more importantly how successful this event will be. As we plan mainly to educate and connect people, there is no quantitative measurement we can go by apart from the attendance count. We can only improve effectiveness once there is a way to measure the effectiveness of our open forum.
However, one aspect of this project that has suprised our group is the willingness of experts to assist and participate in an event like this. Our group member Ben, was very successful in bringing in people from all areas in this topic. The enthusiasm from these experts as well as their advice and guidance has certainly been a great help in being one step closer to our final goal.
BWiles
sunnyhoshingchan
changmai
mattbaril
Excellent idea about the forum. Do you have any thoughts about perhaps rallying to televise this event to the public or generate media coverage as part of a marketing scheme to transform the stigma around addiction? If you can somehow show that people are actively engaged in the issue and that they care, perhaps you may be able to put an attention-grabbing spin on the whole topic. I think that as soon as it becomes a hot issue, people in society start forming opinions and educating themselves around the issue. I suspect you will start to see local leaders being more proactive about the issue if you did that. At the very least, it would become a popular corporate social responsibility issue.
Thoughts?