Fundraiser event planning: LEGO night

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LEGOS AND BEER! For charity! YourWords STL is a new nonprofit that provides creative writing workshops and one-on-one tutoring to teenagers in under-served communities in St. Louis.

During regular weekly workshops at Marygrove children's home and pilot sessions at Lift for Life Gym, we've already provided over 150 hours of one-on-one volunteer tutor time. We published a booklet of our students' poetry for them to keep, and are about to publish a booklet of their science fiction shorts, complete with illustrations from a local graphic artist who spent a session with us and the students.

If we have learned one thing in our first year as a nonprofit, it's that the demand for this type of service FAR outstrips the supply. We feel an urgent need to build up YourWords STL so that we can bring our workshops to more children in need. We have big dreams for next year, including adding a second regular weekly venue while continuing to serve the students at Marygrove; ramping up our website and marketing to recruit more tutors; publishing hardback versions of the students' work; and providing some much-needed tech resources for our older students so that they can stay up-to-date on their regular schoolwork and continue their creative writing on their own time.

Happily, we are now an official 403b charity and can raise funds to accomplish these goals. Urban Chestnut has generously donated their Midtown location's party room to host our first fundraising event on the evening of July 16. We plan to have a literary-themed Lego contest with prizes, enjoy Urban Chestnut's excellent selections on tap, and creative other activities to raise funds, raise awareness, and raise the fun level for the event.

We are seeking volunteers who would like to help us plan the details of the Lego contest, work out the logistics of the ticket pricing and purchasing decisions involved in the event, develop the marketing materials to advertise the event, and recruit commercial donors to provide contest prizes. Because this is a small event, there will be minimal meetings (likely two or three meetings of ~30-60 minutes each) with a lot of the communication done via email instead, between now and the event on July 16. On the date of the event, we will need several volunteers to arrive early and help set up the event at Urban Chestnut. Please feel free to email with any questions about the organization itself or about this event!