Today we went to The North America Auto Convention. We were really looking forward to going because this event is where it all started- a year later, it is still fresh in my mind. One year ago, we had just thought of this project and had absolutely no money and no idea how we would proceed with our idea. We were clueless whether this seemingly out of reach idea would actually work, if people would be interested to hear about it and support us. We heard about this event from Alex Zhuang, whose dad is one of the organizers. Ryan Chen and Weilin tuye and I excitedly prepared brochures, chinese and english proposals and even a raffle for us to advertise at the event. We gave a speech on the stage in front of more than 300 people and then went around to each table collecting donations. It was the first time I had to explain my idea to strangers and it was terrifying. I was really scared of facing rejection and it felt like a direct punch when people refused to donate or waved us off when we tried to approach them. Holding back tears and forcing a smile, I soon realized that for every two or three people that rejects us, there is always a kind hearted stranger who would take the time to listen to our cause and donate. Some even kindly gave us suggestions and their contact information on how to reach them for help in the future. It was exhilarating to hear that my weird, impossibly far fetched idea could actually generate interest. We ended up raising over 4,000 RMB. This year, we went to the event on a short notice. Although we were told we would not have a chance to speak on stage we were determined to go to thank all the people who supported us a year ago and to show them that their kindness went to support a great cause. 96 boxes of eggs just arrived this morning and I was excited to sell most of them before next week's shipment. My goal: to sell ALL of them!! It did not go off to a great start, when Yiping Lin, Weilin Tuye and I arrived at the event, we were harangued by the organizer because we had not officially notified them ahead of them about our participation. She was annoyed and was very reluctant to help us so we had to find tables and supplies to set up our egg booth ourselves. Luckily, the hotel staff was very helpful and helped us set up in an area next to the entrance. We introduced people to eggschange and our on sell eggs and managed to sell a few boxes as people came in. However, soon the event began and we had nothing to do sitting outside. So we went in and approached a couple tables, most people responded with an impatient wave of their hands or simply averting their eyes. The worst experience was when we went to the "vip" table and the man rudely cut us off and said "go to another table", he made me pretty sad and I realized I hadn't grown as tough skinned as i thought. The event went poorly for us compared to last year, probably because we did not get a chance to speak on stage so we surprised a lot of people and they may of thought we were scammers.... On the bright side, a fair amount of people remembered us from last year and are willing to try our eggs. Best of all, we ran into our "mentor" Goodwin Wang who we met at the event last year, he had given us a lot of valuable advice before and had sponsored our website. We had recently lost touch but we set up a meeting with him for this friday:) Most disappointing of all, we waited until 9:30 outside the ballroom because a lot of people we talked to said they will come outside to buy our eggs after the event is over. After hearing the music stop after a while we realized that something was wrong and the event seemed to be over. We went in and were shocked to find that most of the people have already left through ANOTHER entrance, we had waited the whole night for NOTHING! In silence, we packed up our untouched egg boxes: we sold 14 boxes (gave goodwin two for free) and was very far from my original goal. In all it was a very disappointing day for me but I guess there are bound to be failures at times.
by Jennifer GuHi Everyone! From this week onwards we're going to make our break time meetings a lot more productive! As you know from the email, we will be splitting everyone up into separate committees, such as the Kinder Eggs Committee, the Weekly Egg Sales Committee, the Charity Committee, the Newsletter Committee, and the Elementary School Committee :) So everyone, you guys really do have be on time for the meetings, because you don't just have to deliver eggs, we do expect you guys to contribute to your committees, especially the Kinder Eggs Committee, which is going to get really busy soon, because it's coming up, and we really want to publicize our kinder eggs and create a sort of hype for them before we start selling massively! :) Also, we've created a weibo and boke for Eggschange! As JinJin said, it's pretty much Chinese twitter, it's really popular among the local chinese community, and we're hoping that through this we can get lots more publicity, not just more new subscribers, but also as another way other charities can get to know us! =D So, if you have a weibo, or your parents do, please follow us! And.. as you all know, our previous point system, was a little dysfunctional, just a little.. xD but we are going to be improving on that! From now on, we're going to keep a close record on all the things that you contribute to Eggschange, in order to add up your points, and there will be exciting prizes waiting for you!!! (soon to be announced!)
expenditures:20 farmers: 1000 chickenseach farmer= 50 chickens, 50% egg production rate/day, 25 eggs/ daymonthly overall egg production: 14,000 eggs/ month/ 20 farmersmonthly individual egg production: 700 eggs/farmer/ monthmonthly egg payment to 20 farmers: 2RMB/egg purchased from farmer, 28,000 RMB/ 14,000 eggs/ monthmonthly overall payment to 20 farmers: feed + eggs purchased = 38,000RMB/ 20 farmers60% eggs sold in Shanghai : 8,400 eggs *3.33RMB= 27,972RMB40% eggs sold in JiangXi locally: 5,600 eggs *1.5RMB = 8,400 RMB(due to over-production of eggs, need of larger Shanghai market and transportation limitations on train)overall earnings from selling eggs in Shanghai and Jiangxi: 36,372RMB/ monthoverall payment 38,000 RMB/ monthlosing 1,628 RMB/ month (made up through fundraisers and bake-sales)Purchasing chickens:first round- 380 chickens for 6 farmers /12 RMB eachsecond round- 824 chickens for 14 farmers / 12 RMB eachtotal: 1,448 RMB/ total chickens(purchased more as many chickens died in the winter)Hope to be buying more chickens in the future for more farmers.Purchasing Boxes:big boxes= 6 RMB / boxsmall boxes = 1 RMB/ box1,000 small boxes/month50 big boxes/ monthoverall boxes spendings: 1,300 RMB/ month
Puxi EggsChange By Alex Zhuang, Grade 11, Puxi campus
The Shanghai American School community has always been a tightly knit one, two campuses but one school. Over the weekend on February 12, a group of students from the Puxi EggsChange club scheduled a meeting with a handful of Pudong students who are officers in the Roots & Shoots (R&S) club, in the hope of extending the reach of EggsChange. The original proposal was to devise a system that would allow egg deliveries to faculty members at SAS Pudong, via R&S, sending eggs over for them to distribute on a weekly basis. Much to our surprise, near the beginning of the meeting one of the R&S officers usthat he had already drawn up a professional-looking form that their teachers could fill out for egg deliveries. The level of enthusiasm from our Pudong counterparts showed was very muchappreciated!
The meeting proceeded smoothly as the proposal was initially discussed and the R&S officers grew familiar with the process. We introduced the purpose of the club: providing select farmers in Jiangxi with chickens, purchasing the eggs produced, and shipping them back to Shanghai. We also discussed our hopes for the near future. Some rough edges were ironed out concerning minor technicalities, but fortunately there were no major complications.
And so, egg deliveries to Pudong have already begun, as we are sending 20 boxes over to the Pudong campus each week (though deliveries remain exclusively open to faculty and teachers for the time being).
We are extremely grateful for this opportunity to work with our sister campus. Not to mention, it was very timely as the amount of eggs that was being shipped from Jiangxi had dramatically increased over the past few weeks — a staggering 100 boxes were coming in each week (a total of fifteen hundred eggs!), all of which had to be distributed with haste, as the boxes were quickly piling up.
However, this was not our sole incentive for meeting with Pudong — by branching out and introducing EggsChange to the Pudong campus, we have taken what we hope will be one step closer to exposing our club to the larger part of the international community here in Shanghai. We would like to thank the students from Pudong for their collaboration and strong support, and we hope that the relations between the two clubs will strengthen in the months ahead!
Jon Nordmeyer, Pudong teacher (and high school R&S faculty sponsor) receives an order of eggs.