✨✨GALA RECAP✨✨

Hi everyone!

I'm super excited to be writing to share our experience hosting our first ever gala with all of you! This blog post is going to be a combination between a diary entry and a phone call with a friend, but bear with me as I recount the events of our gala from last Friday (November 8th, 2024) at the St. Mary's boat club! 🤩

The evening began at 6 pm, where attendees arrived, got to know each other, and shared a meal. We served lasagna, salad, cookies, and soft drinks. Once everyone was settled, Kylie and I introduced the event and some of the work we've been able to accomplish through MAP over the past year.

After everyone was caught up to speed, we began by introducing our first speaker, Dr. Joseph Bielawski, who spoke about the importance of diversity in higher education and some of his work with the Dalhousie Science Scholars and Leaders Program (DSSLP).

Gracious Kasheke, a PhD candidate at Dalhousie, was our second speaker of the evening. Gracious talked about his experience going through academia and his hopes for the future of education.

Our last speaker of the evening was Patricia Derby. Patricia works with United for Literacy and talked about her experience teaching children and adults how to read.

We thanked all of our speakers for sharing their stories, and then transitioned into our first activity of the evening. We handed out cards and markers and invited attendees to reflect on the following prompt: Think about your relationship with school - what advice would you give your younger self?

After everyone had written down an answer, they then put them up on our display for everyone to read. Personally, this ended up being my favorite activity and we got a wealth of advice from it!

Our second activity was a mural design activity, where each table drew symbols that they thought related to education. We left this really open ended and ended up getting a ton of really creative pieces of art! We're holding onto these designs and hope to compile them into a mural that can be featured at the library😄.

After this, we had a prize draw for 1 of 5 gift cards we had donated to the event. We're really grateful we were able to do this and really appreciate all of the support we received in the planning stages.

We ended off the event with opportunities for people to take polaroid and digital photos in our photo booth. It was a great hit if I do say so myself 😎.

From the entire team at MAP Mentorship, I'd like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who attended and helped make this an incredible night. With your support, we were able to raise over $1,000 towards education initiatives we're working on locally and internationally.

I already know that the gala will be one of my favorite memories of 2024, and we can't wait to host more events in the future. I'll leave you with the final video of the night before we headed out.