Finding Time
Reflecting on INKspire’s first year
When people find out I work for a non-profit outside of my 9 to 5, I usually get some sort of “deer-in-headlights” reaction. “What? Isn’t that a lot of work? How do you find the time?”
Well… yes it is. And I don’t have an answer to the second half because I still don’t know how I manage it. While my friend endearing calls me “Wonder Woman,” I think I’m more of a “Sleepyhead Sally”. Who has time to sleep? Not me! (A terrible habit, I know).
But nonetheless, amidst the 9 to 5, date nights, and family dinners, I find time. We all do.
INKspire, like any nonprofit, is only what it is thanks to the hard work and dedication of its volunteers. We are entirely volunteer-based and we all work on INKspire in addition to our “full-time” roles.
Frank and Ellier, two of our co-founders, are full-time Masters students. Jo, our third co-founder, is a full-time front-end developer. I work full-time as well. But we, and the rest of our INKspire team, manage to find the time (sometimes I don’t know how) to put in our best efforts towards INKspire. And we find the time — not just to keep this thing alive — but to help it grow.
When we incorporated, we had a team of four: the three co-founders (Frank, Ellier, Jo) and myself. Now, we’re a team of over forty youth across the country, encompassing writing & editing, community outreach, marketing and communications, graphic design, web development, and so much more.
That being said, it definitely hasn’t been an easy journey. The one thing that anyone part of a start-up or nonprofit (in our case — we’re both!) is that you work really hard.
But every road block we’ve faced has been met with an amazing accomplishment.
We were scared that we wouldn’t have enough capital to launch. But thanks to the generosity of the Internet and our friends and family, we’ve raised over $10,000 in Kickstarter funds.
We were scared that no one would care. But we’ve met so many amazing people with the same goal as us — to give youth a voice. And with hundreds of articles and users on our site, that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We reach an audience of over 4,700 social media followers and engage them in discussion on our monthly topic every single day.
We’ve had the chance to work directly with government groups (e.g. Markham Mayor’s Youth Council), youth-focused charities (e.g. ACCESS), and other non-profits, (e.g. Hive Toronto). We’ve also connected directly to different youth-led groups and other non-profits for each of our monthly topics to help us further explore that topic. Take “Mental Health” month, when we had the exciting opportunity to work with the National Youth Advisory Council of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
We’ve even had the chance to meet so many youth in-person at events across the GTA. This past year, we’ve been a part of: the Markham Mayor’s Youth Council’s Markham Expo, Volunteer Toronto’s Youth Expo and Grassroots Volunteer Fair, the Federation of Canadian Secondary Students-Fédération des Élèves du Secondaire au Canada’s ICE Conference, the Toronto Youth Film Shorts Festival, and Commerce Without Borders’ “Becoming Agents of Change” Conference. We got to interact with so many ambitious individuals who shared our passion, and whether it’s as a user or volunteer, they’ve joined us on our journey. We’ll be taking this a step further as we recruit passionate youth to lead our INKspire chapters at universities across the country in the near future.
It’s been over a year now that we’ve launched our site, and I can’t believe how much we’ve grown since then. But we’re not done yet.
And I can’t wait to see what’s next.
