The Peer Facilitators (PFs) are a group of teacher selected students that come together to find ways to help bring the AISD high school community closer. I was a PF since grade 10 but I was always a passive member of the group. I’ve always had disliked when my ideas were rejected and felt uncomfortable sharing my ideas to a big group in fear of what they would think of me. This year I got out of my shell and decided to be a more active member of the group. I constantly shared ideas, spoke in front of the whole group and tried to ignore what the other’s thought. I also decided to take the role of treasurer of the group. I thought it wouldn’t be a big job as the PFs don’t host that many events. However I quickly realised that I was wrong.

This year the group as a whole decided to host more events to help our community connect. We hosted more dances, more lunch mixer and we even had a GooseChase Adventure. While we hosted more activities we also needed more money to fund these activities. Suddenly we also had to host many fundraisers. This is honestly the most difficult part of the process. We had to find a time and place that the PFs would free and then with our own money we had to make or buy treats that we assumed the high school was like. Fortunately after having several sales we were able to raise enough money to host one of our biggest events, the winter dance.

This is where my job as treasurer came in. Even though we had enough money to last our group sometime, we couldn’t finish it all of it at once. I had to find the most budget friendly way we could host these events without ruining the fun. This proved to be harder than I thought. Everyone had so many brilliant ideas to make these events better but it was always heart breaking to tell them that we didn’t have enough money to sustain them. So I came up with the idea to start a spread sheet that kept track of the amount of money earned each sale, and the amount spent on each event. I then shared that spreadsheet with the whole group so they were aware of the amount that we had they can plan these events according the budget.

This year I was really happy with the events that the PFs hosted. The lunch mixers we hosted definitely help create bonds between people who never would have met otherwise.