Rising to the challenge

This year, has been full of ups and downs!
At its start, Jessica and I decided on a few goals;
Our main dance goal (for ourselves) was to become zill proficient, then we encouraged our students to save for travelling to Festivals and for workshops.
We also decided it was prudent to start raising funds, not only for our own training, but also to help those ladies who would love to travel to Festivals and do more workshops.

To that end, we started Zahra's Fun Events and started hosting different kinds of fundraisers each and every month.
We started off with a Music, Art, Literature Trivia evening, followed by a Ladies Afternoon.

The shocking news of our studio founders sudden death, sent us spinning and we barely pulled off our annual World Belly Dance Day, but still managed to raise R3600 for the chosen charity.

We are hosting in conjunction with a local hockey club a Casino Night this month, with a Golden Oldies and Musical Evening in the planning.

Sadly, our little big city has been slow on the up take and although our students have jumped on board, with planning, promoting and helping, we have barely covered costs!
Between, family drama and winter blues, we are marching on, ever optimistic!
Honestly, I believe the ladies might even do me in, if I try find the silver lining one more time.

Enthusiasm has started to wane and moral is low, our economy in the Eastern Cape has never been amazing, but it's at an all time low.
We continue to plan and hope and work hard. Driving our husbands, boyfriends, fiance's and parents a little crazy, we tighten our belts a little more and try squeeze out an extra penny from our budgets and come up with another idea to share an event, find a venue, put together something fun.

We have contacted various markets and requested permission to do some time honoured busking.
Putting up posters and dropping leaflets, sending out emails and sharing, sharing and some more sharing on Facebook.
Press releases and diary events are sent to our local newspapers. Each event sees us holding our breathe and soothing each others strung out nerves.

Months of planning, over in hours and we plunge ourselves into the final prep of the next event!  Exhilarating, stressful and we do enjoy ourselves at each event, regardless of how much it has brought in!
Having said that, well it would be really nice to say, guess what we have covered the cost of the nicer accommodation, to our ladies, you can use your portion of the so so accommodation money for that other workshop or that outfit or that silk veil you have been eyeing!

Having drawn no salary from our small dance studio, so that we are able to attend an amazing retreat, hosted by our two favourite master teachers, has been hard, but being able to say to our husbands, we've got this covered has been worth the sacrifice! Especially when winter dawns and jeans need replacing or we discover last year's winter wardrobe no longer fits, here I proudly celebrate our community of ladies. Everyone stepped in and shared the little excess we have, I read a blog a while back about a random lady shaming another because she had not bought from a fancy boutique and here I tell all and sundry most days, of how my new "jeans" came from a bag, my mother-in law was clearing and how my daughter's whole winter wardrobe is hand me downs.