But how do the witches come true? Can ghosts escape from dreams? How can the monsters even dance? Let’s see how all these actually came true…!
It was the 22nd of September 2023, when a huge gang of monsters and witches came to the Sri Dharmaloka Hall of University of Kelaniya to dance in the Demons’ Night.
Targeting the fundraising for future entrepreneurship projects, the Demons’ Night was organized by Team 01 of the Spark’23 project which was done by the Finance Avenue of the Rotaract Club of the University of Kelaniya.
Within a very short period of time starting from the 9th of September 2023, the preparation for the Demons’ Night was done by the Organizing Committee (OC) being busy as bees. Since the OC was free to decide on their own project, the OC arrived at a decision to arrange a DJ Night with the Halloween theme as it was closer to the month of Creepy Hollows. Later on, with some time-to-time gatherings by the OC, the haunted highway to the Demons’ Night was decided little by little. Along with a budget of around LKR 2.5 – 3 lakhs, it was a great challenge to meet the budget and manage the expenses only by selling the tickets to reach a target of 700-1000 audience within 2 weeks.
Although the normal tickets for the Demons’ Night were LKR 300 each, due to the need to cover initial fund requirements, the participants had the nice opportunity to buy Early Bird Tickets of LKR 250 each that were sold until 12th of September mid-night. Since the target audience was expected from the University as well as from the Public, the potential participants were able to buy tickets at the University premises as well as by depositing to the accounts displayed in the flyers shared. Forms were circulated for depositors in order to gather necessary information and to ensure confidentiality when they collect the tickets physically. With the striving efforts, the OC was able to sell all the tickets completely to 1000+ participants beyond the maximum target. The Public Relations campaign that was conducted by sending attractive flyers and videos every so often to awaken the people about the Demons, was a strong foundation in making the target audience a success.
The team was also able to get a sponsorship for the LED panel from DJ Shaggy who was the DJ personnel of the event as the Gold Sponsor.
In making the Demons’ Night a real one, the OC worked during the day and fought throughout the nights with witches, ghosts, weirdo pumpkins, giant spiders, and vampire bats together with bloodshed tombstones around, for the decorations.
On the day of the Demons’ Night, there were food and beverage stalls, Halloween special face painting and a photo booth stall that was previously planned to be held. These stalls were rented out to other projects’ organizing committees as an opportunity for their fundraising activities. About an hour before starting the DJ festival the entrance of the Sri Dharmaloka Hall was filled with an enthusiastic audience, to dance through the haunting night. A Raffle Draw was also conducted by randomly selecting a winner from the ticket number. The winner was presented with a Halloween special Trick or Treat Pack during the event.
After enjoying the dance with the Demons for 3 hours, the Demons’ Night ended with a beautiful ending giving out a fully satisfied audience, with their gratifying feedback.
In this way, escaping from dreams, the witches, ghosts and monsters became true and they danced through the Haunting night in the Demons’ Night…
