We would like to share the journey with you, it took us exactly a year to turn this project from an idea into a published book. The journey and learning was extremely valuable. We met amazing people like you who supported us through the course of this project. 

 

The 40 Story’s project integrates visual art and storytelling with a way to help youth explore their core leadership skills and help people to strive to become healthy, caring, and responsible citizens.

We would like to share with you the journey behind 40 Story’s and all the up’s and down’s along the way.

 

• We learnt how to engage with the community effectively. We attracted 55 kids, from over 25 communities in 3 months to be part of 40 Story’s.  There was lot of doubt in the early stages however as we progressed we were embraced extremely well for taking this bold step. We realized taking this bold step was worth it.

• The brand “40 Story’s” was a great conversation starter. We were challenged and questioned many times.  By changing the conventional spelling of the word, we hoped to show that youth should not be judged by how they appear on the outside, but by the content of their character. It really all came down to the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

• Over seven recruitment events took place, including the Mega event for 450+ people to recognize the hard work of the participants. This amazing event included a dance performance, an amazing singing performance, and a number of inspiring speeches from both kids, and influential members of the community.

• We realized from these events that just emailing and calling people isn’t always enough, true commitment is shown in face-to-face conversation and meetings. It requires person to person connection to make an impact.

• Over the course of the cover-designing process, we went through over 55 different looks and edits until finally deciding on one cover that was colorful, fun and eye-catching. This was an extremely difficult and stressful process that helped us to learn how to make deadlines quickly and efficiently, and helped to teach us the importance of patience.

• In editing the actual content of the book, we had weekly meetings and often met up with the publishers, resulting in over 20 different revisions. However, this task was simple compared to the many other tasks we had to complete over the one year course of this project. Perseverance was key, in order to make this process smooth and efficient.

• Book pricing was quite an interesting discussion. We wanted each book to raise $5 dollars for a cause, however we looked on Amazon and realized doing that would be near impossible. We had to spend many hours with the publishers to decide the right pricing. Today, if you buy directly from us, we can raise $5 dollars per book and if you buy from Amazon/other online book stores we can raise $1 dollar/book.

 

Overall the journey to create 40 Story’s was remarkable. We did our first book signing with Bellewood Senior Living. It felt good because the vision we had worked so hard to achieve was finally going to make a big difference in many communities.  The next big thing we are working on is STEAM : Creativity Hackathon where we will be hosting 2 day hackathon to create 3D products  followed by a shark tank like pitch session.

 

If you are interested to learn more about it, feel free to send email to chiragdart@gmail.com. To purchase copies of this book, visit our store.