Anna Tobias & PoP Indy: Bringing together a community to build a school
Meet Anna, Founder of PoP Indy, one of the most successful PoP clubs in history.
We have over 70 PoP Clubs around the U.S., and even a few international clubs. They’re all doing stellar work to raise awareness of our mission to a wider audience, and we’re so excited to highlight one of our strongest PoP clubs, PoP Indy.
Led by Anna Tobias, the club has reached (and surpassed!) its $25,000 goal to build a school with PoP, an amount that Anna admitted seemed crazy to her friends at the beginning.
“After I read the Pencils of Promise book, PoP became one of those things I stayed up late at night thinking about. The problem was, I didn’t quite know what to do. I ended up sending 9 friends the book and a letter asking them to read it over winter break. Amazingly, they all did! Then I asked them to come over, eat cookies and talk about PoP.
They had no idea what they were about to get into! I told them that I wanted to raise $25,000 to build a school. They looked at me like I had four heads. But the amazing part is that they stuck with me and pushed through all the crazy, and the outcome has been incredible.
I think the first time we really bonded as a team was at that first meeting. We all talked about our thoughts and feelings after reading the book, and they were all very similar. Everyone thought along the same lines of, this is unfair. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that for me, I was so confused as to why I was so fortunate and why these children weren’t. I just kept asking myself questions like “Why do you get to go to school in a building? What can you do to change this unfair situation?” I think we used the anger we build up over the fact of unfairness as fire, as motivation. We were so determined.”
Along with smaller fundraisers like cocktail parties, speaking at school functions, selling custom PoP Indy t-shirts, lemonade stands and social media marketing (the club has its own Instagram and Twitter accounts), the club held its first major fundraiser on September 12th.
“We had a big party with 3 food trucks, a DJ, dunk tank, bounce house and tons of fun! We had about 150–200 people at the event. My dad had the idea for Food Trucks,” said Anna. “We wanted to do something different and unexpected. We started the night with around $7,170 and ended it with $22,253. All in all, we raised about $15,000. We had so much fun and are still on cloud nine over the results.”
PoP Indy embodies the fact that providing quality education takes a communal effort. This group is an incredible example of the change that can happen when a couple of big-thinking, big-hearted individuals bring an entire community together.
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Our PoP family is always growing. We’d love for you to join us.
Visit PoP Indy’s campaign page:
