AUGUST
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
- Anais Nin
Summer is almost over! Well, we still have August but it always feels like a transition month and for someone who has been in education for a while, the month in which school starts. So one can say that August is probably one of my least favorite months since I’ve never been a fan of school. I dreaded the first day of school as a student and educator.
At Platform, August will also be a transition month but a good one. We are planning to grow our board to reflect the diversity of our organization. This will also help us launch our efforts to raise money, specifically grant writing, to acquire part-time staff. I believe in paying people for the work they put into our organization. But right now, we just don’t have the finances to support a paid staff. I want to change this. It is one of my primary goals in the coming months to raise money for a staff so they can commit their time to Platform rather than juggle multiple jobs and some time in their few hours of free time to volunteer. It is wrong.
I have been reaching out to the community in search of board members. I had the opportunity to meet and talk to some of the potential candidates and I am excited. By the end of August, we hope to have an advisory board of 5 members. The original board, Clara Yoon and Mish Southgate, will be promoted to the executive board. Both the advisory and executive board will participate in the biannual meetings but it will be the executive board that will have the final say on the direction of Platform.
And I am super-elated about my grant writing team. I will be introducing them to you soon. I am still finalizing a few details before I make an announcement. But it is looking like we will have a fighting chance of getting some grant money. This will then free me up from grant writing so that I could devote more time to growing Platform in terms of community outreach.
Given my numerous commitments, I am not certain if we will be able to expand to SF or NYC. I am struggling to juggle multiple jobs and projects. If I add more to my plate, I think I will break and I cannot afford to fall apart. Not at this point. Maybe later but not now. So I am hoping to find someone who can help me organize and bring the right people to the table. In other words, I need an extremely efficient organizer. How will this be possible? I don’t know. We shall see.
There is one new addition at Platform that I want to share with you. I am planning to develop a youth-led version of our Spring workshops for high school students. What will this look like and how will it be structured? Well, it will become clearer in time. As you know by now, I usually have a vision first and then figure out the details later. It is how I approach every project - visualize, deliberate, act, and change everything based on the exigencies of reality.
Sam
Founder. Executive Director
August 01, 2019