By Franchesca Nguyen

Last month over the weekend of October 2-4, 2015 a non-profit organization called Forge 54, gathered 91 volunteers from Southern California for an accelerated 54-hour collaboration. This event took place at Amusement Park, Inc. in downtown Santa Ana, CA.

Together the team had a goal of generating over $400,000 in marketing assets to a local Orange County non-profit organization, Wells of Life.

Wells of Life’s mission is to build 1,000 water wells in Uganda by 2020 in order to provide clean drinking water to 1 million villagers. With this objective in mind, Wells of Life aims to increase life expectancy, decrease water-borne illness and poverty, and increase education opportunities – specifically for girls and women.

Forge 54 volunteers come together annually with a variety of professional backgrounds, including creative marketers, designers, and developers. They devote an entire weekend to use their skills to do something good, not only for their community, but their world. Over the course of 54 continuous hours, Forge 54’s intentions were to complete PR plans, video content, social campaigns, and a mobile app called Stories of Life.

In the previous year, Forge 54 volunteers donated $308,500 in deliverables to Playworks SoCal. Playworks SoCal aims to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for safe, meaningful play and physical activity.

The 2015 event kicked off on Friday, October 2 at 12:00pm PST with a meeting that outlined creative ideas, action items, and deliverables. Every volunteer was then assigned to a team based on their interests, skills, and where support was needed most. Teams included digital, social media, public relations, event planning, video, photography, web/app development, and design. Over the remaining 2.5 days, rapid progress was made as the clock counted down the 54 hours. As each team aggressively tackled their own tasks while supporting other teams with common goals, an overarching achievement of establishing a mobile app, new website, logo, slogan, social and PR plans, video campaigns, and more was set!

By the end of the challenging yet satisfying experience, a final $574,725 in deliverables was accounted for. Congratulations to Forge 54 for its 3rd successful year of selfless contributions!

For more information on how to get involved, visit Forge54.com