This paper describes a business leadership project: creating the literature club to promote reading books, selling them, and donating money to the local orphanage. The literature club members are expected to be young people, primarily students, from the college. The project is about promoting literature, meaning that it aims to help students get acquainted with significant literary works of the current and former times. In addition, the project will help to raise money to aid the local orphanage financially.
The project will be conducted in the form of weekly gatherings for students interested in literature. There will be “a weekly book” for reading and then an open discussion during the gathering on the weekend. The first book will be provided for free to the members of the project. At the end of each gathering, starting from the first one, the book for the next week will be offered for buying. That way, with 20 gatherings except for the first one conducted, a total of 400 books is expected to be sold for 10$ each. The main goal of the project is to raise 4000$ to donate to the local orphanage. The time frame will be from September 1, 2021, until March 31, 2022. September will be an organizational month, and the first gathering will happen in October.
The budget for the project will be 1360$ for buying 420 books, with 20 of them to give away for free during the first gathering and 400 of them for selling. The budget might be further expanded in case there will be more participants than expected. The challenges that I might face leading this project are associated with seeking a place for the gatherings. However, Kouzes & Posner (2017) state that challenging the process is one of the key practices of exemplary leadership. Therefore, I believe I can find an appropriate place quickly, and my first attempt would be to use the college library for gatherings.
The project team will be several students from my course. I could also use the help of the college librarians or the managers of the local community center to provide me with the location for the gatherings and probably some assistance to organize them. Furthermore, the success of this project will be beneficial for the local book market as I intend to buy all the books wholesale. The success of this project would be raising the complete sum of money to donate to the local orphanage.
This project would mean much to me as I love literature, and I would feel great if I could share my passion with others while helping the children from the orphanage. Moreover, if this project is successful, I could use the knowledge and experience I would gain from it to create a new, more widescale project. However, I expect some aspects of the project to be frustrating, for example, the lack of participation from other students. In addition, some members of the project may not want to buy the books while still attending the gatherings. However, I hope that my love for literature is inspirational enough to enlist other students in a shared vision, another practice of exemplary leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). I expect this project to be a significant part of my development as a person and as a leader since I can use my leadership skills to do what I love and help the community at the same time.
Reference
Kouzes J. M., & Posner B. Z. (2017). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations. Wiley Professional Development.