Location: American Cancer Society Office
Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2013; 6:30-8:00 pm
I had volunteered for the ‘Susan Komen’ walk earlier in the year
and as such was on their mailing list for social gatherings, having in fact
attended a party to celebrate their event a few months ago. This evening they were offering complimentary
tickets for a ‘Bon Jovi’ concert this
evening and I had requested a pair for me and a friend. ‘Bon
Jovi’ was the first concert that I had ever attended years ago, having won
a ticket in a slogan contest for ‘Pepsi’. I was looking forward to going, but my friend
had to cancel and I didn't feel like going by myself. So I informed ‘Komen’ that I would not be utilizing the tickets and instead
decided to go for the final ACS meeting of the year - just before our walk on
Saturday - and they definitely needed help since tonight was going to be a
working session. So the reason I was
going to help an organization supporting breast cancer research was because I
turned down a gift from another organization doing the same. I am always amazed by life’s little
ironies.
I arrived at the ACS building to
hear lot of alarms going off. The badge
the security gave me did not work and they had to eventually let me in. I went upstairs and saw that the room where
we have our meetings had been rearranged and people were busy working. Ted, who is now running the show, has
tremendous energy and greeted me with great gusto. He then introduced me to Carrie, who is the “new Adam” and will be the main point
person with the Strides Committee moving forward. Ted said that Carrie had hit the ground
running and had arrived from Indianapolis to take up this job. Her enthusiasm could be gauged from the fact
that she had landed at the airport at 4:30 am, and had gone straight to the ‘Shedd Aquarium’ for a promotional show.
She thanked me for coming and then it
was time to get to work.
 |
| The 'Survivors' bag |
Our first task was preparing a
gift bag for the ‘Survivors Tent’ and
this included the usual assembly line where we would go around the table, stuffing
the bag with goodies such as ‘Post-It’
booklet, a pink sash and some stencil like thing. The bags were actually quite good and would
make for an excellent take-home present.
We went around in circles and after filling each bag, put them in a
box. After some time we ran out of ‘Post-It’ and so had to stop since we
did not want some bags to have lesser things.
There were several boxes with shirts in them – no doubt to be
distributed to the walkers – and Ted asked if I could close them and stack on a
cart. When it came to closing, I
wondered if I would be using tape, but Ted showed me a way in which you could
fold the flaps onto themselves. I
struggled with it initially, but eventually managed to get all the boxes
done.
 |
| Photo frames with the flyers |
Some of the ladies were cutting
tiny strips of flyers for the event and these were eventually going to go
inside photo frames. I worked with
another volunteer Jess, to get all of these photo frames out of the plastic
bags and then started inserting flyers in them back-to-back. These frames were then going back into the
bags that we had assembled earlier. So
I set about inserting the frames into bags, zipping them up and putting them in
back in the boxes. While this was going
on I chatted with Andrea, who is a leading volunteer with ACS and had delivered
a heartfelt speech at the launch breakfast – something I complimented her on. I learned that she was a Marathon runner and
had just run the ‘Chicago Marathon’
and was targeting to run the ‘World 7’. While we continued to work Ted started
giving us our assignments for the day of the event. He said that he wanted at least one committee member
per station to manage general volunteers. There were stations such as the ‘Survivors
Tent’, which is always popular, kids area, raffle, food and other
activities such as temporary tattoos etc.
I was initially assigned to the food station, but then Ted said that
they needed someone authoritative looking at the photo booth, to ensure that
people did not take off with the props such as the pink wigs. Besides this I was also to keep the other
volunteers, which were mostly teenagers, in check. I said that I would get my dark sunglasses so
as to look as authoritative as possible!
We were almost done and I moved
the stuffed boxes to one end and inserted the last of the photo frames inside the
bags. Ted said that while our evening
was done, he had to next go to the two ends of the city to deliver shirts. It would be a long time before he would be
done for the night, but such was usually the case just days before the event. I left feeling thankful that I had been able
to come instead of going to the concert.
They had definitely needed help and it just goes to show that something
good always comes out of a seemingly unfortunate situation. Next stop was Saturday, and the walk for which
we had been preparing for the past 8 months.
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