Episode #21: How To Make An Impact With a Big Idea and a Small Budget
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Making an impact is one of the most important parts of the job when you're a toy person. But when you first start out in the industry, making big moves to make a difference for and in our industry can seem like a daunting task. But it's important for ourselves, and our industry that we put our best foot forward and implement those seemingly overwhelming ideas.
So for today's episode, Azhelle shares with you a story about how she built a 6-week summer program in partnership with the Economic Opportunity Commission of Nassau County and educated underprivileged youth about creative careers they may have never known about. You'll hear the process she took to building her curriculum, to acquiring donations and introducing her students to the careers of Toy Design, Graphic Design, and Visual Merchandising.
From this episode, you'll learn that no matter where you are in your toy journey, you have the ability to give back. The experiences that you've already cultivated, as small as they might seem, could serve as a life-changing, career leading, lightbulb moment for someone else.
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This episode is brought to you by thetoycoach.com
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Azhelle 00:00 You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, Episode Number 21. Intro/Outro + Jingle 00:07 Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you. And now your host Azhelle Wade. Azhelle 00:17 Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach calm. For today's episode, I want to talk about how you can make an impact with big ideas and a small budget. Since last week's episode, I've been getting a lot of messages from people asking how they can help how they can make a difference in the toy industry and give something back to black communities in particular. And that's great. I love that energy. I appreciate your support and I want to support you with inspiration and guidance. Our industry is incredible. It is so much fun to be a part of as an inventor, a designer, a product developer, and even a marketer. And wherever you are in your toy journey, you know enough about the wonderful world of toys to educate others about our amazing industry. And I want to make sure you believe that. So today, I want to tell you a story about how I once created a FREE Mini toy summer program by acquiring donations, and committing my own time and energy. And I want to tell you, when I started this program, I think I must have been about 21 or early 20s. And I really didn't know much about the toy industry at all, but still, I knew enough to be able to give back and inspire others. So after I explained my story If it's still not crystal clear to you how you could do the same, I am going to guide you with some first steps that you might take if you're considering doing what I did, and maybe creating a nonprofit program or a toy initiative of your very own. Now, I want to start out by saying that in the toy industry, there are a ton of other ways to give back then what I'm going to detail today. If you have a toy line already, for example, you might consider donating a portion of your revenues to a nonprofit organization or a specific fund. But today, I'm going to focus on what to do if you want to build something big like a program, but on a really small budget. Now back in 2008, I was having a hard time finding a summer internship. I was Between starting my toy design degree. Now the toy design program had given enough pre coursework to keep me occupied and super toy focused. But this summer I was still looking for an opportunity to earn income and grow my experience and improve my resume during the break. So I was trying to figure out how to spend the rest of my summer when the mother of a friend of mine invited me to work at the Economic Opportunity Commission of Nassau County for a few months. Now, the Economic Opportunity Commission of Nassau County, which from now on I'm going to refer to as the EOC for short, is an anti poverty multi service agency that creates programs and establishes institutions to improve the quality of life for all people that live in poverty stricken or underprivileged communities. And I want to be clear Clear, the EOC supports communities comprised of a variety of ethnicities and many races. So, in the summer of 2008, I was brought on at the EOC, given a desk and given the opportunity to create an educational program to expose underprivileged youth to creative career options that they might not have even known exist. So the idea behind this program, it really goes back to a quote that my mom always has told me that people can only grow as far as they know. So my focus was to help these youth know the possibilities of creative careers. On my first day, I remember asking my friend's mom, like, where do I start? How do I get supplies? And I remember her saying donations, and she had a smirk that pretty much I just said, You're a smart girl, you can figure it out. And I remember googling how to make a course syllabus how to make a lesson plan, how to get good donations even and feeling totally out of my depth. I want to clarify this picture for you a bit. In 2008. I had just finished my associates degree, and I studied visual merchandising and exhibition design. And I had literally just been accepted into the toy design program. So I mean, you know, I'd made a few toy designs that had gotten me into the program and I was working on a few more over the summer. But I mean, I have to say as far as teaching toy design, I did not know what the heck I was doing. But when my friend's mom, you know, asked me to come out for the summer, you know, to teach other kids about toy design and exhibition design. I was Just I think I think I was so excited to relive my camp counselor days in a more meaningful way that I just said yes. But I definitely underestimated what building this mini toy and graphic design summer program would take. Okay, so let's go back to my first week at the EOC. Pretty soon I was given a picture of who the kids were going to be that I would be educating. They were going to be between the ages of six to 12. And I think they said I would have 10 to about 15 of them in each of my classes. So I decided that the next step would be to write out my educational plan. Right, I figured once I know what I'm teaching, I'll know what supplies I'll need to teach it right. So I remember googling syllabus and lesson plan examples so that I had something to use as like a template because at that point I was no teacher. But by the end of the day, I had a mission statement for the program. And I had actually outlined three courses. I had planned to teach toy design, graphic design, and visual merchandising design. Basically, what was my entire college career at that point. Now, the outline included a description of what each course would teach as a whole. It included how long it would take to teach it and the weekly lesson plan that I would implement. Now, pretty soon, my course outline got approved. I had a date in the calendar of when it would start and the teachers of the regular EOC summer program had been told to select kids to shift into my summer program and so in essence, I was good to go except for one thing I had Absolutely no supplies. So my mind went back to the word donations and my friend's mom's like, evil smirk and, and that's when I started calling in favors. I just contacted my college friends via text, social media, and I asked them to donate supplies. I told them what I was doing. And I told them what I had hoped to achieve, and I told them what I needed. I remember just sending out messages like who has a mannequin despair, who has rendering markers that they don't need, who has developed paper pads that they kind of throw away. And at that time, I was also a pretty serious crafts supply hoarder myself so I had the luxury of going through my own closet and pulling up markers and colorful tissue papers rolls of plaster, and I put them all aside to donate to my educational summer program. I'm at the EOC. Now that week, my friend started reaching back out to me. And I remember the very first moment where I felt like this program could actually make an impact. And that was when my friend Joseph de bello donated, I think it was to me It might have been three, but I feel like it was two free mannequins that his workplace was just getting rid of. And he was like, take it if you don't take it, they're gonna go in the garbage. So he and he even offered to drop them off at my house. And when I saw those mannequins, you know, he opened up his trunk and I saw these mannequins I was just in shock. I mean, you know, in school, when we were learning mannequins were really just treated like gold because they were so expensive. And I remember just thinking like, wow, here Here I am, you know, a fresh graduate just about to bring these two mannequins to a free program for underprivileged youth. I mean, how cool is that? And I mean like the first time, the first time that I'd ever been touched a mannequin I was 21. And and here I am now, these kids that I was going to be teaching in this summer program, we're gonna learn to take apart, put back together and dress a mannequin at age 12. I mean, I remember thinking, I remember I kind of started to freak out when I was looking at it because I'm thinking like, Wait, is this too advanced? Am I going too far is this not what kids want to do during the summer, but it was a little too late and I was way too excited. So you know, I just accepted those mannequins and and moved on with my plan. Now, after gathering all of the supplies that I needed for my three courses, and planning out six weeks of lessons for toy design and graphic design and visual merchandising, I traveled to every single location I'd be teaching at and there were three different locations and I wanted to set up my space. I didn't have a car at the time. So I traveled by bus or I got a ride to transport supplies like the bigger things like the mannequins. And now two of these three courses were actually taught in an open gym space where I could use the stage or closet for storage. And the third course, the graphic design course was actually taught in a computer room. Now in that computer room, I spent a full day just going computer to computer installing the trial version of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop so that I could teach my class how to use these programs and educate them on the career possibilities in packaging or graphic design. I think the trial of the time was something like 30 days and I remember timing my lesson just so perfectly that we can Get through all of the tools that I needed them to learn before that time ran out. So about a week, a week and a half maybe into it. I want to say the programs began, I started traveling to three different locations in Nassau county by bus, and I taught everything I knew about toy design, graphic design, and visual merchandising to these kids. And let me tell you this. This was the first time that I realized how much I severely underestimated the intelligence of children. I mean, through just the graphic design course I watched like this. fear and intimidation of these kids just transform into confidence and joy. They picked up the tools and the functions of Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop so quickly and they loved it so much that I actually ended up having to add to my original lesson plan. These kids came up with their own company names and logos and learn to use the tools in ways that honestly I initially thought would be too advanced for them. And in the visual merchandising course, these kids worked as a team and learn to handle mannequins with care, take them apart and put them back together. They designed beautiful, like, I'm not even kidding. It was really beautiful paper mannequin fashions like as a team with so much joy and enthusiasm. And when I told them that like this is a job, this is a career you can go after. I mean, they were just so excited to hear more. And finally, but most importantly, the toy design class in that class, I taught these kids about the toy design industry. And then I help them come up with 20 ideas and illustrate those toy ideas. They got to draw these ideas out on high quality vellum paper. And with some students, the younger students, I would help them draw it out on paper. And then we took a week where we just colored in our amazing toy inventions, and we talked about what every single toy does and the features of the toys. And I'm those kids loved talking about what their toy designs were. We spent the second half of the program building toy prototypes out of plaster and painting them with paint. And I even had each student who felt confident enough, just present their ideas to the group. And by the end of all of that, they got to have an idea. See their drawing, see their drawing come to life. By making it out of something physical and three dimensional, which was just as simple as plaster. Every week that I went to each of these classes, I reiterated to those kids about how they could do this for a career and make great money. I told them about the job titles that they'd never heard of before, taught them about the schools that had degrees that could point them in the direction of obtaining those jobs. And in that entire summer program, that big, impactful idea operated on a really small budget. So if you've been wondering how you can give back where you can donate your time or your expertise, I want you to get grassroots about it. And here's two ways that you can do that. The first way is just to think about nonprofits in your town. And if you don't know of any, look them up online. You want to go to their websites and reach out to the event organizers or the grant writers of these nonprofits by either using their contact page or finding them on LinkedIn. Now, oftentimes, they have a budget that they need to spend, but they don't have the programs or the manpower to use that money, the way that they're required to use it. So introducing yourself highlighting your expertise, and pitching them an idea for a nonprofit program or initiative that you are interested in helping them implement could be all that they need to start a new program and use funds that they've already acquired. Or, if you want to start small and you're thinking I don't want to take on, you know, the big job of starting a whole program, just reach out and ask for volunteer opportunities. coming in as a volunteer first is a great way to get to know the people inside the organization. And then you can start showing them your capabilities, telling them about the industry that you're a part of, and then maybe talk about the possibility of rolling out a unique program idea. Now, the other ways I want you to get grassroots is by reaching out to friends or family that you might already have in the nonprofit sector. If you have a direct personal connection to someone who works for a nonprofit organization, or maybe you're a second degree separation from that person, you've got a great Head Start. Reach out to them with just a clear, concise proposal on an initiative or a program that you'd like to implement. You can do the same program idea that I did if you weren't sure where to start. What's going to be important to make your program or your program pitch success is having an overall course plan and I just want to go over what that will involve. There are eight things, eight points that you want to make sure that you make in your program pitch. One, you want to have a course name, just something simple and easy for them to refer to. And something that's clear as to what the course is going to accomplish, to, you want to have a target age group. The organization you might be pitching to may serve a specific age group, you can find that information on their website and you want to match that as closely as possible. Step three, you wouldn't talk about your course duration. You want to tell the person that you're pitching to how long you need for the students to be committed to learn something from your program proposal. For an ideal location, type, I mean, you there, it's often you're not going to be able to choose where you have your course but it doesn't hurt if you need computers, to be able to put your program together then you have to learn It'd be known that you would need a computer room. But if you're open, and you can make things worth work, if you're in a gym or in a classroom, then let them know that here. Five, you want to have a clear week by week plan. And that means just clearly specify what you're going to teach each week. It could be the title of the lesson, it doesn't need to be a full fledged lesson plan. But just making it clear that you know, what you're planning to bring to the table each week will let your viewer know that you're you're really serious about this program and you really want to implement it and you've put some time into figuring out the process and the logistics of it. Number six, clearly defined program outcomes. You want to talk about what participants in your program will achieve. In my instance, the child would design and build their very first toy product Type, think about what that means for your program idea. Number seven, you want a clearly defined program mission? What are the main educational points that you want your participants to take away? In my case, it was the understanding of creative career options, knowing them by name and feeling more confident and going after them. Number eight, you want to build out a supply list or a plan to obtain supplies or funding. Here's where you want to get really specific on if you are going to require assistance to raise capital to make your program successful, or will you be able to acquire your own donations through personal and professional relationships? Now if you're interested in building out some sort of educational program to give back to underserved communities and to help promote the toy industry, I want to make it as easy as possible for you. So I've built you a simple nonprofit program pitch template. It's just a PDF download that's going to help guide you in the creation of a simple pitch for a nonprofit program idea that you might have floating around in your head. Now, as always, to get that freebie, just head over to the toy coach comm forward slash podcast forward slash 21. And inside of that freebie, I'm just going to list eight. Now what you're going to get inside of that freebie is pretty much a template asking you the same eight points that we just went over in this episode. But if you're busy and you can't write down those eight points right now, and you'd prefer if they were just given to you in a PDF template, well, I've got that all set up because of the protests going on right now. There is a lot of attention on the Black Lives Matter movement. And that's resulting in a surplus of funds and programs to assist, uplift and educate black people in many industries. Now, I would love it if some of the programs that we see rolled out in the future months and years included the education of future inventors and entrepreneurs for the toy industry. I really hope that this episode offers you some guidance on exactly how to make that happen. Okay, toy people. That is all I have for you today. I hope you found this episode inspiring and I really do hope that you take the initiative to share your knowledge and your toy expertise with the world. And I'm telling you kids are a great place to start. Before you go, I would like to invite you to leave us a review and please share this episode. episode with your friends. I hope you learn something new in this episode and that you won't let a small budget stop your big ideas. Until next week, I'll see you later toy people.
Intro/Outro + Jingle 23:15Thanks for listening to Making It in The Toy Industry podcast with Azhelle Wade, head over to thetoycoach.com For more information, tips and advice.
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