Location: Chicago Cares Offices
Date: Tuesday, June 04, 2013; 5:30-7:30 pm
As soon as I had accepted the
Primary Leadership position, the next task was to recruit other leaders to be
on my team. The first two people I asked
were Claire, who does a terrific job at ODS and Alisa, who leads ‘Get Crafty’ creatively and
efficiently. Karen, whom I had met at ‘Garfield Conservatory’ and her
boyfriend Dale had also accepted, but once Chicago Cares assigned us a site, we
realized that we had two leaders too many and they were reassigned. I was delighted to have such interest for my
team and could not have asked for better teammates than Claire and Alisa. However, before we could participate in
Serve-A-Thon, there was training to be had.
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| We were going to be the solution |
I had been to the Chicago Cares
offices only once before; my previous visit had been to train for ‘The Celebration Of Service’ day.
Wendy opened the door and directed me to the conference room where I
recognized some of the other attendees from various Chicago Cares programs,
including Christine, who had been my Primary Leader at ‘The Celebration Of Service’.
Soon Alisa and Claire arrived and my team was complete. Our packets had information for each of our
sites and ours was ‘Site #4 – Mary
Hartwell Catherwood’ apartments. I
am quite familiar with the location, having been there several times for ‘Senior Breakfast Club’ program.
Jessica, our instructor for this
evening, started by reminding us how to represent Chicago Cares, especially
since we would be dealing with not only the clients, but also the corporate
volunteers. It was important that we
portray a positive image of the organization, not that it would be a problem
with my team, or anyone else in the room for that matter. I noticed that there was a speech that the
Primary Leader had to deliver and based on my previous experience, there would
be others on site who would be talking as well.
I asked if there was a set protocol on who should speak when and Jessica
said that it would not matter so much this time. Also covered were various scenarios for the
day of the event, especially various contact numbers in case of emergency. For everything that the Volunteer Leaders
needed, they were to contact the Primary Leader, which was me, and the Primary
Leader was to work with the Command Center in Chicago Cares. I asked questions about the Corporations
involved and who would be at our site.
This is not decided beforehand and in fact we would only know when they
showed up. One other thing I asked was
if these corporate volunteers had readily accepted to be a part of this event,
or had they been coerced by their HR.
Jessica said it was a great question, and for most parts the volunteers
would be there because they wanted to participate.
Next, we went over some of the
safety rules and what to do in case of an accident. Chicago Cares would be providing all of the
supplies for our projects and those would in fact have already been delivered
to the site before we got there. We
discussed what was to be done with the leftover supplies and which were to be
disposed, left at the site or packaged for Chicago Cares pickup. This was especially important for sites that
would have painting projects and while our site would not, almost all others
would have some sort of painting.
Speaking of projects, our site had two main activities that were planned
– we were to create 3 murals and also organize a picnic for the residents. I saw that approximately 60-75 senior
residents were expected to attend our event and we had 35-40 volunteers
assigned. That meant about 2 residents
per volunteer and I asked if we were overstaffed, since not all volunteers may
be communicative and thus have very little to do. Jessica said that this was a good segway into
some scenarios and she asked us to break out into pairs. I teamed with Claire and our question was how
we would deal with volunteers who seemed engaged initially, but lost interest
in an hour or two. I told Claire that
this was the exact opposite of her project where the young boys and girls get
more involved as the evening progresses.
When our turn came to discuss, we said that we need to keep an eye out
for such volunteers and ensure that we talk to them and reassign them to other
tasks if required. Some of the other
scenarios discussed were what to do if you overslept – call everyone on the
list; or if you ran out of supplies – means you haven’t planned well.
Before we left, Jessica invited
us for the after-party and said that there would be a special tent for all the
leaders. I introduced Alisa and Claire
to each other and asked which of the two projects they would like to pick. Claire said she preferred the cooking and
picnic, which was perfect for Alisa since she got to do murals and she is good
at Arts and Crafts. I told them about my
experience at this location and mentioned to Claire that the small kitchen may
be a challenge. But some of the residents were really nice and all were sure to
have a great time. I walked back to the
train station with Alisa and we talked about this project and what to
expect. It was going to be a huge
responsibility for sure, but one which I have been preparing for ever since my
first project with Chicago Cares. A
Primary Leader at Chicago’s single largest day of service. It doesn’t get better than this.
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