I spoke to Noah on the phone last night, and got the first report from Indonesia: lots of good conversations, great ideas and enthusiasm from Eko, our Indonesian collaborator. He showed a slideshow on his laptop to the women sorting coffee in the co-op's warehouse, which they loved, recognizing many of the faces he'd captured on his last visit. He also mentioned cupping three kinds of coffee, and a late-night feast on durian fruit.
This was not exactly the original plan. But given multiple layers of bureaucracy and delays in our attempt to have this course listed for university credit, we have somehow arrived at the point of launching course announcements and student recruiting at the point when...well, it might already be too late.
After talking with some of our advisors, just days before we were both scheduled to leave for Indonesia, we faced the hard fact that if at least one of us didn't stay on the ground here in the US trying to get the word out and find students, there would be no chance of finding enough people to make the actual course run. It's a big gamble, here--of course most people need more than a few months to make a decision (and, likely, save up for) such a big trip. We're going to have to get the word out to a LOT of people in order to find the magic number that will make it go.
We are, admittedly, not in a great position, time-wise. It's not going to be easy, but we're also, of course, stubborn. I've left dozens of phone messages with professors, despite how much I hate cold-calling. We've run the numbers and figure that with seven people, we can at least break even. With twelve people, we could even get paid for the weeks in the field. We'll run the trip even if we just break even.
In terms of recruitment, we've put everything on the table. And thrown in the table. We (ok, I'll admit, it was me that started it) had a harebrained idea over lunch one day last week, to make something akin to a kickstarter campaign--but that instead of asking for cash donations, we would ask people to help us find students. If you aren't familiar with Kickstarter, it's the "crowdsourcing" funding model where people pitch their idea for a project, investment, business, etc., and try to get it funded by donations of various sizes from supporters. There is usually a graded series of 'rewards' depending on the size of the donation, and a key part of the model is that if the project doesn't get fully funded (i.e., reach whatever goal was set at the outset), then no one is charged.
An example of a great kickstarter: last spring, my friend Theo, an excellent and generous chef who simply loves to feed people, wanted to start a mobile food cart selling Indian food in Missoula. He ran a Kickstarter campaign asking for $9,000 to purchase and transport a used commercial-grade food cart to Missoula. I donated--enough to get a couple of gift certificates for dinners at the food cart. Theo got to start his business, and loads of us here in Missoula get the benefit of being able to buy dinner from him at summer concerts in the park!
Back to our non-kickstarter, campaign, though....we decided we didn't want to just ask for money. What we really needed was people--students to come with us. And we need at least 7. So we thought of 7 prizes or rewards we could offer anyone from Missoula who either signed up or recruited someone for us. They run the gamut, from a couple of our chickens to perhaps our most-treasured thing: the barnboard kitchen table. Truth is, neither of us wants to see that go, but at the same time, we are kind of hoping to have that problem! (besides which, we are feeling a bit more confident in our building skills, and could probably make a new one in a lot less time now--maybe whoever got that prize would take pity and let us build them a new one to fit their space). But we're putting the video out soon to the Missoula community, and really have put it all on the table.
We're brainstorming ways to generate some scholarship funds too, but are going to have to kind of keep that on hold till we have a sense of whether there's any chance of having students to use them!
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