GUFSA: A club’s journey

Hi! I am Braulio Lequigan, a.k.a. Brolly. “New Year, New Life”, they say, so the idea of finally writing a successful blog had been bugging me since New Year’s Day, not to mention the overflowing guilt I felt knowing that it has already been several months since I became an official Explore Blogger (my apologies to Christy and Lara). This is the first blog I’ve ever written in my entire 21 years of existence, so please bear with me. This blog contains opinions of the writer and the writer only. Tee hee!

This blog isn’t a list of reasons why joining a club is awesome – my fellow blogger Danielle already made a great one about this here — but a summary of what 2014 was like to a Griffith University cultural club. This club is GUFSA (goooof-sah) or the Griffith University Filipino Students Association. GUFSA is a year old now and based at Nathan campus.

I was told that getting members for young clubs starts in a zigzag pattern. It sets off low while the club is unheard of. Then goes up, because you know, it’s unheard of. Then goes down again, reasons may include club committees aren’t able to keep the club interesting. Shoots up again, because club committees such as myself, (*wink wink*) are way too badass to not come up with something. And so on. This is exactly what happened to GUFSA.

Semester 1 – Ready, set…

First semester of the club was expectedly quiet. Throughout the semester, there were 10 active members from 50+ signup names we’d managed to convince that we had free food. Just kidding, we were broke.

Right after the second half of the semester, the stress that the university carried (which is all the time), kicked in and took a big chunk of everybody’s time. We all went into ninja mode and concealed our presence up until the beginning of Semester 2.

Semester 2 – Going up! It is a zigzag after all.

We started the semester with a bang! We surprisingly made alliance with other Filipino clubs such as QUT-FSA and Fil-Oz UQ. We came up with Games of THRONES – The Rise of a New and Exciting Sportsfest event where these Filipino clubs competed in three different sports (basketball, volleyball and badminton).

At the end of a long day (longer for the club executives), an overwhelming wave of happy faces flooded the venue. We executives knew we made a successful event. Not only did our individual club members have fun, but we also built bridges connecting our clubs.

Moving on, we managed to hold weekly hangouts consistently and with consistent high numbers of happy people.

Around halfway through Semester 2, we were invited to participate in the annual Cultural Gala where cultural clubs get a chance to showcase their culture’s finest performances and costumes.

Adding variety to what we do, we participated in charitable events such as the Filipiniana Festival 2014, where we gave our time and effort to raise funds for the Victims of the Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the Philippines.

 

To top the semester off, GUFSA received 4 nominations for the 2014 Griffith University Clubs Awards Night. Receiving these nominations out of all the 70+ Griffith University clubs — I definitely got the numbers wrong but should be close to 70 – our committee members were grateful that our club was appreciated by Campus Life (our boss).

Halfway in the event, our club won the ‘2014 Most Involvement in a Griffith University Campus Life Event,’ which I believe is the proof of how hard we tried to keep the club active. With this award, we are pumped to get more things happening for 2015, especially for Mr. President (Brolly) who made a TED Talk like speech. Tee hee!

Reflecting back from a quiet Semester 1 to an Oscars-like award, we finally got at the end of Semester 2. I personally think the club has gone a long way. We now have several happy people, more experienced committee members, and a bit of popularity – you know connections/networks. I guess it is much clearer now that the purpose of our 2014 was to make a better new year for the club. Come at us 2015!

If you’ve got some super powers that enabled you to read till this sentence, I appreciate your time for reading my first ever blog. I would like to thank my ‘bae’ Crisma for proof reading my proof-less blog. And also I’m grateful to Christy and Lara who are always patient to me.

More blogs to come relating to clubs at Griffith Uni, I promise!

– Brolly