Interested in a dumpling dinner for four, a personal magic performance or salsa lessons for two?
These services and dozens of others will be offered tonight at the Asian American Alliance's (AAA) Annual Service Auction, one of the group's largest events of the year. A wide variety of Tufts students and faculty members will offer their own forms of assistance - at a price.
Students will be able to bid on the contributions, and the AAA will donate all proceeds to a local organization that helps Burmese refugees settle in Worcester, Mass.
The event will take place from 8 to 10:30 p.m. in Sophia Gordon Hall's Multipurpose Room.
The AAA hopes to raise a good deal of money during the auction, said Yin Lin, a freshman who is co-organizing the event.
"It's one of our biggest events, and last year we raised over $2,000 for another Asian organization," Lin said.
Lin said that the AAA hopes to raise as much money as it did at last year's auction. Some of the lowest bids will start at $5.
Money raised will go to the Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center (RIAC), a small, grassroots organization that works with refugees and other immigrants in Massachusetts.
"It was a group that was introduced to the Asian American Center, and they desperately need funds to settle Burmese refugees in the Worcester area," Lin said. "We wanted to do something local, so it was more appealing to students."
Lin said that the local focus would allow students to have a better idea of how their contributions would be used.
"We wanted to do something that we would be able to make an impact on, as opposed to donating to a national organization where we wouldn't know how the money would be spent," she said.
The Asian American Alliance is a campus political group that promotes awareness of Asian-American issues. Jenny Lau, a sophomore who heads the group's community service committee, is co-organizing the service auction with Lin.
"It's a way to bring light to an issue that affects the ... Asian-American community," Lau said of the event.
Some services to be auctioned include breakfast in bed, a personalized birthday cake and a 30-minute a capella performance by the Jackson Jills. Students, faculty members, student organizations, local companies and others made donations.
Junior Yeonjung Park, a peer advisor at Career Services, contributed one hour of personal résumé and cover letter critiquing services and 45 minutes of one-on-one summer internship consulting.
She said that normally students can only make 30-minute appointments for either résumé or cover letter critiques, and that summer internship consulting was usually with a career counselor.
Park said that she used to volunteer frequently as a peer counselor at Career Services. AAA's auction would allow her to volunteer again but in a different way.
"I was actually very heavily involved with volunteering until sophomore year, said Park, a junior. "Then I became a junior and ... thought I should focus more on my academics, so I ... sort of cut off some of my extracurricular activities."
While winners will have to pay for her service, Park is glad to be volunteering her time, as all the proceeds will go to RIAC. "I was like, 'You know what? If I am missing out on volunteer opportunities, maybe this is one time when I can actually do something,'" Park said.
