The Road to Success and Starting Right
The fateful day –Tuesday the 16th of June 2020. In a fog of lockdown boredom, I checked my email out of habit and saw a new arrival, entitled “Become a Challenge Leader – deadline this week!”. When I’d seen the first email about this a week before, I’d been mildly interested, but as I was halfway through fundraising for a recently postponed Kilimanjaro trek, I’d done the sensible thing and ignored it. One life-changing adventure at a time, dude! However, a combination of my ADHD, boredom and curiosity meant that I opened the email, and as I started looking into the challenges, 3 words jumped out at me – EVEREST BASE CAMP. In that moment, I knew I had a problem…
You see, I only really have 3 specific things on my bucket list: Summit Kilimanjaro, trek to Everest Base Camp and run a marathon (no walking!). The chance to do Kili AND EBC in one summer was simply too good to pass up, especially as I would get the chance to help a team of others fulfil their EBC dream as well! Before common sense kicked in, I had applied for the role… and by the end of my first meeting with the RAG, I had got it.
After the meeting finished, I sat there, rapidly flipping from joy to excitement, to PANIC and back again. Then I made up my mind. This was big. The biggest opportunity I’d ever had. Not only because of the money I’d be raising, or the places I’d be going; but also because there would be people relying on me - people who’s lives could be changed forever by coming on this adventure with me. That’s when I decided that I wasn’t going to recruit just enough people to make the trip viable, help them just enough to get my discount then raise just enough to meet my target. No, if I was doing this I was going to make it a top priority, THE top priority. Only when I had done everything I could (within reason obviously), would I be satisfied. Right then and there, I broke my role down into 3 sections – Recruitment, Welcome and Inspiration – and got to work.
Recruitment
Recruitment is by far the hardest part of the CL process – but the rewards taste even sweeter because of it. All the pain I’d gone through, chasing up the same mildly interested people only to get no response, or messaging 67 different sports societies and having only 2 of them cooperate, was all worth it when the first signups began rolling in. And they didn’t stop until number 28, because I didn’t stop chasing people up, answering their questions and getting them to tell their friends. For obvious pandemic reasons, most of my promo had to be done online, and my advice for this would be to not leave any stone unturned. I literally went onto Facebook, searched “UoN” and joined every group I could with over 100 members. Then the easiest thing to do is just post about the trip on your own FB page, then click “Share” and just select all the groups you can – and don’t stop until you get kicked out 😂. Sports and hiking societies, halls groups and course group chats seemed to generate the most interest – and if you can get the uni or SU to email all students in halls that are an absolute goldmine!
Welcome
As the team came together, I knew that the Welcome stage could make or break this entire experience for everyone. When I say ‘welcome’, I mean it in the literal sense, but also in the way that the team is set up, and the environment that the members come into. Not only did I want to be approachable, but I also wanted to be present and engaging – not just a name on a screen. During my first encounter with every new signup, whether it was at a socially distanced outdoor meeting, over a video call or even through a personalised email, I tried to infect them (poor choice of words nowadays 😂) with my enthusiasm, energy and optimism. I also created and fostered a lively team group chat, ensuring everyone agreed to check it regularly for updates and keeping it active with fundraising updates, plans for socials and handy announcements. An engaged, happy and confident participant is much more likely to be a successful fundraiser, and actually enjoy the process as well!
Inspiration
This leads me neatly onto my third task – being an Inspiration. I realise how toe-curlingly bigheaded that sounds, so allow me to explain. I realised that in times where I could not physically support my team as much, leading by example and showing them that I was truly by their side would be invaluable. Hence (myself inspired by the activities of a certain Exeter challenge leader), I decided to join 3 others in my team and run 300km in 30 days. With any luck, I’d get a couple of hundred quid in donations, have an excuse to post regularly and raise awareness, and learn some lessons that would hopefully be useful for the team. I ended up raising over £1500, and on the final day I crossed the third achievement off my bucket list, by running my first marathon! My team noticed my efforts and their results, and started following my advice in terms of promoting their fundraising pages, taking on challenges (e.g. running, cycling, press-ups), and posting about these regularly to get donations. At the time of writing (3rd March 2021), we have just hit £30,000 raised as a team!
There’s probably been a bunch of extraneous personal stuff in this blog, but I decided to leave it in to show you how throwing myself into this role and grabbing every opportunity has helped me and my team achieve things we never thought possible. I’m not going to lie – it’s going to be tough to juggle uni, friends and all the challenge leader stuff. But you already knew that when you signed up right?! If this is something you’re passionate about, you will always find the time and energy to go that extra mile – and I promise you’ll see the rewards! Best of luck, and please get in touch if you have any questions, my email is mahya17@gmail.com.
To sum all of this up, I would say that the key ingredients for being a challenge leader are being organised, enthusiastic and persistent. Some things aren't going to work, people won't turn up to meetings, and sometimes it will feel like that team fundraising goal is a pretty big number! Just take a breath, make a plan and try and stick to it - as long as you are doing your best, your team will see this and be inspired to up their game as well!
Written by:
Muhammed Ali
-Karnival Everest Base Camp 2020/21 Challenge Leader
-Karnival Kilimanjaro 2019/20 participant
