Last Sunday on 9/20, Red Cross hosted its first event of the year with a beach cleanup in Cijin. There were 60 participants in total, over half of the total number of members and the highest participation rate Red Cross has had in the past few years. As the Red Cross president, I’m extremely happy to see the high enthusiasm the members have for this event and relieved to see everything working out smoothly as planned. From discussing to the Red Cross officials about this idea to actually carrying out the logistics, double-checking and rechecking the information to make sure the attendee list match up, calling the member’s parents for the first time in my life to ask for their residence IDs, gathering the execs for numerous meetings and followups, brainstorming team-bonding activities to make the event as fun as possible… I’m so glad all of the hard work paid off and made this event a blast.

This experience really made me realize the art of teamwork, to say the very least. Huge shoutout to my executive team, because I surely couldn’t have planned this on my own. Morgan handled all the external communication needed so that I can focus my efforts on organizing and communicating the details to the members, while Brian helped with formatting to ensure the official documents are kept organized. Giselle and Emily dealt with the financial transactions for the insurance and T-shirts fee, which helped me relieve a lot of stress and burden. Throughout the planning and preparation process, I’m especially thankful for them for always valuing my input and different opinions on things. This is quite a big executive team compared to other clubs, so there are certainly different voices when it comes to decision-making. Regardless, I’m glad how everyone is so willing to work together and evaluate the plans to do what is best for the club. There were times when individual executives relayed incorrect information to the club, and that’s when I realized how important it is to cover and help out each other. In front of the club, we’re seen as a cohesive unit rather than individual members. Therefore, rather than blaming each other, it’s more crucial to carry joint responsibility and move forward together. I’m happy to see my growth throughout this experience into a more responsible and mature person who is able to see the bigger picture.

The beach on the day of the event was actually pretty clean. There were no huge garbages, but there are always scattered pieces of plastic bags or plastic straws underneath the sand if you spot more carefully. We also found mouse and crab corpses…!!! 😛 We still collected quite a considerable amount of trash regardless. To wrap up, this event is a huge success, and I truly appreciated every individual’s effort in making this happen!