Location: The Standard Club
Date: Saturday, September 14, 2013; 11:30 am-4:30 pm
I had “Opted-In” for this One Brick event weeks ago and was delighted to
have the opportunity to EC on this Saturday afternoon. I mean, it was for helping an organization
that supports orphans and that more than anything else was a cause that I could
firmly embrace. The description on the
One Brick website said, “Friends of the
Orphans supports a network of nine Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH, Spanish for
“Our Little Brothers and Sisters”) homes and their outreach programs in Latin
America and the Caribbean. They transform the lives of orphaned, abandoned and
disadvantaged children by creating families for life through values of
unconditional love, shared responsibility and education. This enables children
to grow into caring and productive members of their communities.” They were hosting a Gala in the evening and
our task was to help them prepare through decorations, floral arrangements and
setup of silent auctions and activity booths, or anything else that they
required.
I arrived at the location just as
Jo-Elle, the EM was getting there. We
went upstairs and into the grand ballroom where the main event was to be
conducted. One of our volunteers, Megan,
was already there and stapling some papers.
Melissa, who was an organizer with NPH came over to tell us about our
initial projects. These included some
folk joining Megan in stapling papers containing the silent auction information
and list of items, making floral arrangements for the dining table, and cleaning
some vases that were going to be used for – not the floral arrangements but
rather for putting in raffle tickets during the silent auctions. Soon most of our volunteers arrived,
including Charles Paul, and which meant that we would not suffer for lack of
entertainment.
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| The floral arrangement |
Since the floral arrangements
were outside the vase, they needed to be put together in a very precise manner,
with flowers being cut to a certain length and tied in a bunch so as to be free
standing. There was an expert who was
doing this, having taken classes in floral arrangement, and she needed a few
volunteers to assist her in this activity.
Jo-Elle and I asked who would be interested and three of the women,
Pari, Cara and Elaine said that they would love to. If I was attending as a general volunteer
instead of an EC, this would probably have been my last choice, simply because
I would not have wanted the responsibility of creating something so pretty and
running the risk of ruining it. I
helped carry the boxes with the vases into the ballroom and when we looked
inside, saw that most of the vases were covered in dust, having been in storage
for some time. One volunteer Suzy, and
Charles Paul took to cleaning them with Windex and as usual, he had her and
everyone else in splits with his stories.
I joined Megan and another
volunteer Joe at the stapling station, where my task was to stuff the two pages
being stapled inside a brochure. With
our assembly line working well, we were done soon thereafter and next task was
for me and Joe to go around the room labeling the tables. Each table in the ballroom was to have a card
named after a street in Chicago and we had to match the cards with the table
number. We finished that just as the
vase cleaning crew were done with their task, and so we moved those to the
silent auction room. As we went in
there, we saw a lot of activity going on as Melissa and her crew were
struggling to arrange all of the items on the limited table space that was
available. Melissa asked us to help out
and we told her that we would make it happen.
There were 6 categories and 3 tables and I said that we could put ‘Sports’ and ‘Health’ on one table, ‘Wine’
and ‘Travel’ on another and ‘Art’ and ‘Recreation’ on the third. Each
of the tables had two tiers and Melissa wanted to put premium items in each category
on the top tier and the rest on the lower tier around it. Even with this arrangement, the problem was
fitting all the item description sheets on the table. This was further compounded when another lady
– who appeared to be higher in the hierarchy than Melissa – wanted to display
some of the actual items being auctioned.
This was an excellent idea, but required more room than what was
available. At this stage Melissa was
looking a bit flustered and I told her that I could make it work if she allocated
me two other tables. That way we could
make a section for just the premium items and in do so not only put the
spotlight on the items we wanted the guests to bid on first, but also open up
some room for the other items. The two
tables I was intending to use had been assigned for games and we told her that
she could move the games outside this room into the hallway connecting this
room and the grand ballroom. She agreed
and we got to work, where Megan and I took over the arrangement of the ‘Premium Table’ while Charles Paul, Suzy
and some of the other non-One Brick volunteers handled the other items. Megan and I did an excellent job using some
crates covered with tablecloth as stands and with the vases and cards…or so we
thought. The boss-lady came and started
rearranging everything and after a bit of consultation and reshuffling, we got
it to her satisfaction. She also tweaked
the other tables, but soon we had all the things in order and after putting
stickers on the raffle vases to correspond with the item numbers, we were
done.
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| The Silent Auction Room |
We went back to the main room
where the ladies were still working on the floral arrangements. Melissa told us that some of the booklets
that we had prepared earlier needed to be redone since the inserts had punch
holes in them and that looked like shabby work.
This meant that more copies needed to be printed and so Joe and I went
down one level to where the copier was located and made 100+ copies. It also meant a second round of stapling and
re-insertion, along with stapling of the bid number cards on the backside. After this we took a small break to eat the
sandwiches and other snacks that the organizers had brought in. A captive audience like this is when
Charles Paul is in his elements. He
asked us what era the grand room reminded us of. I looked around and said that they were
probably inspired by the 30s. Charles
Paul is an avid ‘Yankees’ fan and was
talking about his favorite team – the ’27 ‘Yankees’,
when we learned that the room was designed in 1927. Now come on, that is too much of a
coincidence isn't it? The flowers were
looking great and people started talking about weddings. Pari mentioned how some people are still
‘hiring’ an Elephant for weddings, typically a traditional Indian wedding. To this point I asked Charles Paul if there
was an “Elephant Class” on any of his
planes and as usual he had a wisecrack answer for my query.
After the break the flower
arrangements continued while some of the others went back to the auction area
for the final touches. I had been
looking at a tree like display where the leaves comprised of photographs of
some of the kids in the orphanages. One of
the ladies who had been helping out was in fact a board member and she was more
than happy to answer some of my questions.
My biggest concern is when someone starts supporting a child and due to
changing circumstances is unable to continue after a while, what happens to
that child. I learned that while you can
correspond with a child and be named its ‘Godparent’,
they may be multiple people who are also supporting the same child. Furthermore, the money that is being donated
goes into a common pot and helps every child in that orphanage. So even if anyone stops supporting a child,
they are not at a financial disadvantage as compared to the other kids. I found it to be a reasonable model and I
picked up a few brochures to study later.
I asked another NPH staff member if I could look at the photographs of
children online and she said that they do not post pictures online for security
reasons. To this I asked how we were to
then choose the child we wanted to support.
She said that they would make a selection for us since money should help
irrespective and it is eventually going for a good cause. Now she has a point, but I feel that one
should be named a 'Godparent' of a child if they make a personal connection with it, else it’s
just philanthropy. While neither is
wrong, we disagree on this argument.
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| The 'Premium Table' as arranged by Megan and me |
We were almost done and I went
back to the auction area to see Charles Paul and Megan polishing some more
bowls. It seems like the boss-lady
wanted different bowls for raffle and Charles Paul said that he was, “living the dream, cleaning the bowls”. I went around double checking the items vs the list and noticed that some were mislabeled. I told Melissa that it wasn’t a big issue
since the people should really make their bidding decisions based on the description
on the piece on the frame, not the line item on the list. So as long as the categories matched,
everything should be fine. She agreed
and thanked us for making the silent auction room look much better than what it
was initially. The last thing to do
before we left was placing menu’s on the dining room chairs and at a glance it
looked fantastic, especially the desserts.
Afterwards some of us went for a drink and once again Charles Paul
entertained us with his stories about him playing NCAA football. I had been impressed by NPH and look forward
to learning more from them regarding sponsorship.
For an 18-month old blonde with twin ponytails had stolen my heart.
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