By Dhruthi Mittur
BLI funding blog
The BLI Funding has been transformative to our club’s function. Previously, we have had funding specifically for major events, lacking funds to go around for our club’s regular events. This was very detrimental to our club’s functioning regarding our core goal of increasing student engagement with the Campus Farm. This is because one of our biggest changes is transportation to the farm itself. There are no bus routes–through either Blue Buses or The Ride that go to Matthaei Botanical Gardens/the Campus Farm. Therefore, though we have held workdays throughout the year, making sure that everyone could be reimbursed was a challenge and created some inaccessibility within our club. With the help of the BLI funding, we have now been able to host workdays and farm engagement events without worrying about our ability to reimburse transportation. As such, we have furthered our goals as a club in increasing student engagement with the farm.
One challenge we faced after receiving this grant was maximizing creative ways to put this resource to use, reaching beyond our goal of increasing Campus Farm engagement. We devoted time to brainstorming, putting our heads together as a team, and compiling all our ideas to create engaging and innovative events for our members. We worked through losing some of our executive members as they managed their schedules, which put further pressure on the remaining members. We resolved this by speaking to our constituents and asking them for input. From there, we could finalize our events and move forward in executing them. Additionally, we made sure to consult our executive team and ensure everyone’s inputs and visions for the club were accounted for.
Since then, we have been able to host a plethora of events related to the Campus Farm and sustainable food. Previously, our main funding came from the Central Student Government, which required us to place individual tickets for each event we wished to put on. Though it was not impossible, it limited us in terms of the amount of resources we could be granted and the time and energy required of our executive board to secure the funding. With the BLI funding, we have been able to pursue creative events more freely. We put on a Salad in a Jar social and an end-of-the-year celebration at the farm with the funds from the BLI grant. Additionally, we have been able to focus on facilitating leadership within our workday members, by rotating the workday leader. We have also encouraged workday leaders to pause and reflect after their turn and provide feedback on how they could have better engaged the members.
