Leadership - with great power comes even greater responsibility

With great power comes even greater responsibility - being a CEO of a new growing service group called Rescued Glass along with Aldin Shaw the CEO and founder; has allowed me to take substantial leadership roles, initiating actions, motivate and influence others, create change to the NIST community but also helping communities around Bangkok. To begin, Rescued Glass was a small initiative which was outside of NIST that was completely led by solely Aldin as a hobby and passion. However, after I heard about Rescued Glass, I was astonished by how creative the idea of collecting glass bottles from bars across bangkok and then turning them into usable/decorative household goods which are sold then donated to various charities around Bangkok. Once, I got onboard with this exciting initiative with Aldin, I suggested Aldin to bring this to be an service group in NIST as I believed it would inspire and attract new students and generate more revenue.

We visioned for Rescued Glass to be an successful service group in NIST that will be able to have a balanced and motivated team and for Rescued Glass to be able to carry it’s legacy even when we graduate. However, with this vision, we knew the immense of work that will be needed, especially the leadership and organizational qualities that will be required for two of us to start and lead a new service group. However, we did it. Rescued Glass is currently a successful service group in NIST with 8 year 13s (myself, Aldin, LouLou, Aryan, Arash, Lathan, Lukas & Madhav) and 8 year 12s (Anuj, Armane, Veera, Ranveer, Kaiyu, Arisht, Mohammed and Mupham) that were just recruited recently from our first meeting. In this reflection, I will be explaining the leadership roles that I have taken that have resulted into the success of Rescued Glass.

Firstly, I have realized the importance of communication,as when the Rescued Glass first started and members started to attend meetings; many didn’t show up. Not because they didn’t want too but they weren’t aware that a meeting was going on. That was when I realized the importance of making sure everyone knows when the meeting is going on which is why a Facebook group and a google classroom was made, where all members are reminded for meetings and events. Moreover, another aspect of communication that I have developed is being responsible of emailing service coordinators as to be aware and sign up for events. Initially, I would be very inactive checking emails and would usually miss signing up for event deadlines. However, through regularly checking my emails and checking with other service groups if they are events coming up, Rescued Glass has been able to showcase at many events including back to school night, service introduction for year 12s, and many more.

Starting a new service group, I was able to witness the importance of word of mouth as when Rescued Glass started there was only two members (Aldin & I) thus finding new members was a challenge. As majority of students already are in part of many other service groups and have meetings, thus finding a meeting time to work with everyone’s timing was quite difficult. However, Aldin & I thought of going outside the box and instead of trying to steal people from other service groups to come to our meetings instead; was to work with other service groups. For instance, we merged meeting times with “WomenUp” which is a service group consisting of Ali, Lhin-Lou and many other members. By working with them, that means more people and more different and valuable perspectives, opinions and ideas for Rescued Glass to meet their objectives. Moreover, in the first year that we were established 2017-2018 school year we would have meetings on saturdays, where not everyone could show up. However, now in the 2018-2019 school year, we have regular meetings monday after school where new members are joining and allowing us at Rescued Glass to grow even more.

For instance, after Lou-Lou, started working with us, she suggested us to make brochures. At first, Aldin & I weren’t sure of the benefits of having a brochure however, we thought it would be a good risk to try something new as it may allow more people to hear/know/understand about what we do at rescued glass. Once the brochures were done, it was an effective way to market our product and to utilize the concept of “word of mouth”, as when our customers bought products they would take the brochures and suggest it them to their friends. Since then, Aldin & I have ensured to value each and everyone's opinion and give majority of the ideas a shot.

Moreover, I was able to develop the characteristics of a leader when Rescued Glass was selling at the three-way conference. How you may ask, well; I had to be in charge of 8 members when Aldin was at the three-way conference. From that, I learnt simple yet effective ways to ensure the members are Rescued Glass are not only enjoying what they are doing but doing it well. Firstly, to many 8 members may not seem like a big group to handle however with not having much prior experience organizing an event this was a great experience. I realized that if 8 members crowded in one stall it wouldn’t be an efficient use of students so we as a group decided to set up another stall in the front of the school. When doing this, as I was in charge during that time; I had to split up the members with both people they want to be with but also to ensure that there was a balance of members in regarding to experience and knowledge about Rescued Glass as majority are fairly new. Also, to ensure that all members knew the price of our goods, Aldin & I printed out a price list to make sure that the members weren’t guessing the prices of the goods, which could have affected customer’s impressions. Additionally, by also being part of FairNIST I went over to them and shared the idea, which then they also followed to set another store.

To add on, in order to prepare for our sales it requires a sufficient amount of work. Here are some of the events Rescued Glass have sold at:

-Farmers Market at the Australian embassy -Community Sale at US embassy -Parent Teacher Conferences at NIST

-Back To School Night at NIST

-Service Fairs in NIST By being a part of Rescued Glass I was able to understand the amount of time and work that goes into the preparation and how important it is to be responsible and manage resources efficiency. Here are some of the things Aldin & I have to do before a sale. We have to check our storage and what types of bottles we have and specifically how many of each. We do this by doing a tally and counting the items. By doing this, we can see which ones we should focus on promoting more when selling to our customer but we also can see which ones are our best sellers which again can be used to promote our goods. Moreover, we need to make assumptions of how many clients we will be getting looking at how many sales we got from previous similar events to estimate how many of each product we want to bring. For instance, on the first day many of the Heineken glass bottles sold well; so for the next day we brought more Heineken. Moreover, we have to also be responsible of our order list as many of our orders were for products we didn’t currently have on stock. So the following days we had to go deliver the goods and receive the payments. But, some of the products a few of our customers wanted we were unable to fulfill so we had to go talk to them.

Due to the success of our sales, Aldin & I have to ensure that our money is going to good use, as Rescued Glass is a non-profit organization. Again with this, donations to charities require research to be done and a considerable amount of organization. Aldin & I have gone to PAWS, IPSW and the mercy center. Where, we have started to build a strong relationship with the people from the mercy center. Prior to donating to these charities and working with them, we have done research on what they do but also the credibility of them to ensure our money is going to good use. For the mercy center, we had to email Khun Prayana in order to go to the mercy center to not only donate but also learn about the people in the mercy center. Recently, we hosted a workshop for 50 street children to learn how to cut our products and hopefully in the very near future Rescued Glass can provide them jobs. Other than this, Aldin & I have also made a website which is called “rescuedglass.com” which required a sufficient amount of time and planning to ensure the good quality it currently has.

As a whole, working with Aldin to build and develop Rescued Glass has been an inspirational journey which has made me into a better leader and has allowed me to manage my resources such as time efficiently. We hope for Rescued Glass to carry on it’s legacy in the future years.