Contactless Community Drive – Durham Rescue Mission

Although we are stuck inside our homes with syntax restrictions when it comes to helping our community, there are still ways you can help your society without having human contact or going door to door to collect items.

A community drive is a great example of this. During this lockdown, I was able to conduct a community drive, and it was successful. Community drive focused on collecting items such as sanitation items, canned foods, clothing, and paper goods to donate to Durham Rescue Mission to help people who lacked these items. For people to donate, I put a box outside my house where people can drop their items and can prevent any sort of physical contact. Collecting the items was the hardest part because people didn’t donate a lot because of the virus. Even though this was a contactless drive there were not many donations in the beginning. To resolve this,  I designed a flyer to spread the word about the drive. The flyer included information like how donations will help, list of requested items and where they can donate. After that, I shared it with people in my neighborhood and through social media which helped tremendously because more donations started to come in. 

Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s: 

-Have a goal and a clear understanding of what you want to achieve.

-Have  a checklist so that it can guide you in the right direction.

– Make a  flyer so you can print it out and have a digital version as well so you can send via text and social media.

-You can reach out to local/community magazines to further promote your community drive.

-Be persistent and don’t hesitate to send reminders and re-share your drive information

– Reach out to your friends and parents or people you may trust to share your community drive flyer.

Don’ts:

–Not having a checklist to guide you can result in procrastination.

-If you are not as  vocal or outgoing to get your drive noticed then not many people will know about it and chances are your community drive will not be very successful.

When it comes to a community drive there is always a goal or achievement so that there is more incentive to your project. When doing a project like this it is not just about what you want to accomplish, it also about why you wanted to do it. The reason I wanted to do this community drive was to provide people with the items they lacked. I always wanted to help others or change someone’s way of looking at life, whether it be just encouraging someone to do a task or maybe something a little bit bigger like making a difference in their community. This was my ultimate motivation but along with this there were small goals which I wanted to achieve. I wanted to collect around 25-35 items to donate and I was able to eventually surpass that goal. 

Final Word

All in all, a community drive is a great way to have interactions with other people and learn new things.  Through the process, I learned that even in this new norm it is not hard to connect, communicate, and spread good vibes around. All this is possible if you are ready and committed towards your goal. A community drive is a great way to open opportunities for yourself in the future and learn new things. If your drive focuses on health then you have an opportunity to grow in that field.  

Doing it more frequently allows you to learn new things and meet new people. With a community drive you can make a change that your community has been needing for a while and increase your visibility among people in your community. With such drives or work I felt I was not only able to help a number of  people in my society but I also gained  confidence to be more outgoing when it comes to helping people in general. The most positive result coming out of this is that all the nice comments and appreciation that I got from people has motivated me to do more such events to further help someone or a group of people. 

[By Akshaj Sinha, is Global Awareness Ambassador from North Carolina]