things i make for people
Carolina Kickoff
Co-directed a three-day, $40K orientation camp at UNC for 200 incoming first-years.
Carolina Kickoff is a three-day, student-run camp that throws 200 incoming first-years together right before they start at UNC, so they show up to college already having a few people who feel like home. I was a counselor for two years and a co-director my third year.
That meant running a $40,000 production with a team of 40 students: picking and training the counselors and committee chairs, wrangling enrollment for 175 campers, and keeping three days of programming from falling apart. The thing I’m proudest of is the money. We raised an extra $10,000 specifically so that, for the first time, anyone who got in could come for free regardless of whether they could pay. We also spent real time questioning which long-standing camp traditions actually made everyone feel welcome, and changed the ones that didn’t.
It was a crash course in the unglamorous half of building anything: budgets, people, logistics, and the calls you make when something’s about to go sideways at 11pm.