By Avery Maier ’13, News Editor
When the time came to aid an organization in need, juniors Haleigh Miller, Alyssa Bardach, and Emily Ashwell, all stepped up to help. The three girls created the group “Three Girls Serving Three Cups of Tea” to aid the Central Asia Institute (CAI), an organization that builds schools in rural, mountainous regions of central Asia.
The project’s origins are in a grade project that didn’t work out. “It’s simply been Haleigh, Alyssa, and Emily working hard on their own to organize and host tea parties in an ongoing effort raise the money necessary to build a school in central Asia,” said Fred Carey, Project Advisor to Three Girls Serving Three Cups of Tea.
“The three of us felt like it was a really important cause and it was something that needed to be addressed,” said Miller. “We felt passionately about [helping CAI], so we decided to raise the money on our own.”
The idea for the organization came up after the proposed class project was canceled. The girls had already heard about Greg Mortenson, the founder of CAI, and what his mission was before the project was even proposed. Ashwell called Miller soon after the cancellation to discuss taking action for the cause.
“Haleigh and I had talked about [CAI] before, how we were passionate about it and we were excited about it,” said Ashwell. The two then took off with the idea. “Alyssa joined on board because she also felt the same way,” added Ashwell.
Because they were so passionate, the girls started immediately planning out fundraising events. “We started planning in June of ‘09 and we held our first event in August, so we have been doing this for over a year,” Miller stated.
To raise money for CAI, the three juniors host tea parties. They have, so far, been focusing on smaller tea parties inviting only close friends of the hosts. They started with a tea inviting people they knew well, and have branched out to inviting others to host a tea for their network of friends. The girls plan to take it to the next level this fall.
“We have a community-wide [tea party] scheduled for November 21,” said Miller. “That one will be open to the public. We are [also] working on scheduling another one for October 10.”
So far, Three Girls Serving Three Cups of Tea has hosted three small tea parties. While the tea parties were small, the results were big.
“We’ve raised about $5,000 now,” said Bardach. “Our goal is to raise $16,000, so we’ve got about 30% of our goal.”
“It’s been cool because…we are increasingly getting more money every time that we hold an event so it looks like we are going to hit the goal pretty easily,” added Miller.
The group has compared different ways of raising funds and found out that optional admission often rears the best results. “We did [charge admission] at the first tea and that worked pretty well, we raised [just under] one thousand dollars,” said Miller. “And then at the second one, we accidentally forgot to charge admission and we realized that we raised more money without it. So what we’re doing now [it’s] optional,” based on the wishes of the host.
Throughout the country there are a multitude of groups aiding the CAI. Three Girls Serving Three Cups of Tea is not their own organization, “just a different approach to [aiding CAI],” said Miller. The funds the girls raise are given to CAI and deposited into an account that the organization has set up for them. “CAI gave us a group code, so as we raise the money, we send it into them and they put it into an account for us,” said Bardach. “Once we reach our goal, they will take the money and use it to build a school.”
The group’s name comes from the book Three Cups of Tea, the story of Greg Mortenson. “When Greg first goes into the village he talks about how each cup of tea [you share with someone] means something different,” said Ashwell. “We kind of took that idea off on a different tangent.”
“[We wanted to] find a way to identify ourselves,” added Miller.
Deborah Floyd, Dean of Service Learning, was especially impressed by the girls’ passion towards the Central Asia Institute.
“They are so democratic in diving up responsibilities, sharing in the tasks,” said Floyd. “They really work well together. There is no leader of the three… these girls share equally the limelight,” said Mrs. Floyd.
“I’m really proud of the way the girls have hung in there. It hasn’t always been easy and there have been some bumps along the way, but they’ve kept right on working,” said Mr. Carey. “Especially impressive is that these three young women recognize that the seeds of community service can and should be sown globally as well as locally.”
Photo by Adriana Ungerleider ’12, Contributor
