A unlikely fundraiser for farmers in the Arizona heat

106 – 110 degrees Fahrenheit or 41-43 degrees centigrade at 6:00pm in the evening. This would make it to the news headlines on any day for any city. But in Arizona, this summer, it has been the case every single day in the month of August and Arizonans, similar to people experiencing extreme temperature swings have made lifestyle changes to adapt to such vagaries of the weather. Such adaptations include – staying home or stay indoors after a certain time of the day, changes in food habits, sleep patterns, drinking lots of fluids etc. But none of these adaptations would include or at least not ordinarily playing volleyball and certainly not organizing a volleyball tournament in this dead heat.

And that is exactly what these bunch of young volunteers ended up doing in August of this year in Arizona – organized a tournament over 3 days involving 24 teams and in 3 major categories. The games were scheduled between 5:00pm and 10:00pm with temperatures hovering around 110F to 115F on an average. And to top it all, they did this as a fundraiser to support i4Farmers, a not for profit organization, – a platform for individuals to come on board and do something for the farmers.

Anyone who has every organized anything – a small birthday party at home or a wedding or an outdoor event or any kind of gathering can vouch that this is not a non-trivial ask.

The planning for the fundraiser began all the way back in April 2023. The initial conversations were around what i4Farmers was all about and how to highlight its work to a different set of audience to help create more awareness. And once the fund raising logistics were out of the way, the team of young professionals (and may be even students) began their preparation for the tournament.

Since I am not privy to those details, but I do know from my own experience, that this is not a trivial task – outreach, coordination, tournament day preparation, food, sound, lighting, permissions, water, travel and to be done in back to back in 3 consecutive days – is not trivial by any means.

But the team pulled it off.

Thanks to their efforts, i4Farmers is richer by not just the funds they raised, but also rich by the new set of volunteers , well-wishers i4Farmers got.

This was in many ways the first such fund raising event for i4Farmers after the Covid. Things were on the quite side, not in terms of the work taken up by i4Farmers, but certainly in terms of the outreach programs, fundraising efforts etc. So this effort by all the volunteers in Arizona came in as a huge moral booster for i4Farmers team and infuse new excitement.

The funds raised by all the volunteers would be used to support women farmers initiatives in Siddipet and Anantapur districts. We shall provide more updates as we get closer to disbursing the funds.

This fundraising is also significant because raising funds for supporting farmers initiatives is not something individuals normally take up for two simple reasons

1. The impact of such monetary contribution is not immediate and cannot be measured directly. Farming is complex and has several factors that are beyond anyone’s control – weather, floods, market prices, MSP’s etc. And from a donor’s point of view, if their money cannot be measured, then it is a deterrent for them to contribute, which by the way is totally understandable. Even to contribute to farming activities, the donors need to have a certain level of understanding of the farming issues
2. The general misconception is that farmers enjoy tax breaks, get plenty of subsidies and as such why do they need any external help. I’ve tried to answer these questions separately – https://sureshe.wordpress.com/2017/11/10/why-dont-farmers-pay-taxes-and-other-questions/

So given all this, Sai – the volunteer who Srini and I (from i4Farmers) were coordinating with, we thank you and your entire team profusely for your unconditional support and dedication towards this cause. Hope to have many more of such engagements in future.