Location: Bridgeport Art Center
Date: Thursday, November 7, 2013; 5:45-9:45 pm
I had attended the orientation,
reported to One Brick what I had learned and the volunteers had been
informed. Now it was time for the
actual event. So on a chilly
November evening, I took a cab to the ‘Bridgeport
Art Center’. I arrived to find
that the One Brick volunteers had already assembled, including Wilson, who had
recruited a couple of people through ‘Red
Cross’. The only problem was
that they were in casual attire and Kinga – the EM – had been very specific
that the volunteers were supposed to wear cocktail or formal clothing. So she dispatched them to coat-check
while the rest of us waited for our assignment. Rich’s daughter was volunteering with us for the first time
and with him being one of the most popular guys, everyone was interested in
meeting her - perhaps hoping to hear more stories about Rich! Soon we went to our posts, with 5 volunteers
sent to manage the ‘Compost’ stations
as a part of the ‘Green Team’, and
they would be stationed in the party area on 5th floor. The rest of us would be handling the
registrations and check-in.
 |
| They were certainly trying to get the word out! |
Since I was the EC, I positioned
myself to be a support person for the registration team, and with a few other non-One
Brick volunteers in attendance as well, we were well staffed. The guests started arriving and made their way to us, where we would hand them their name-tag, ensure
that they had a raffle ticket and also give them a program. I grabbed a bunch of programs to hand
out, but we did not seem to have enough for all the visitors that were expected – and based on the name-tags on the table, there were a lot of them. So I tried to be a bit conservative by
handing out just one program per duo or group. People were coming in and finding their name-tags by themselves
and so for a while there wasn’t much to do, but then it picked up and we were
busy. Some of the name-tags were
missing raffle tickets and so rather than just give them a spare one from the
roll, one guy was being meticulous by noting down their name and the number on
the ticket before handing it to them.
This made me wonder what the prizes were!
 |
| Registration & Check-in |
While it was hot and cold for us
at registration, Wilson and his guys were extremely busy with coat-check since
everyone had worn a coat this chilly evening. I sent some people over from registration to help them out
and soon Kinga came and took the remaining registration volunteers upstairs for
replacing the ‘Green Team’ members
who were on a break. This meant
that I was the only person left to man the registration table, which wasn’t
much of a problem since the name-tags were arranged by last name and easy to
spot. After a while Kinga came and
send me on my break and so I walked over to the elevator that was taking the
people upstairs. Now, when I say elevator,
I mean a moving platform that was as big as some studio apartments. No kidding. Apparently the building had once been an Industrial facility
and these elevators were used to transfer heavy machinery. I mentioned to the people in there that
it was as big as my apartment and I wasn’t even sure if it was a joke. There was a girl with us holding a wine
glass and as soon as the elevator started moving, she started talking about the
‘Healthy Schools Campaign’
program. She was obviously one of
the staff members and took full advantage of the slow speed of ascent to
deliver her message.
The elevator
opened into the main room and the party was well and truly on. Above everything, this event was a
competition between student chefs from 14 schools who had been tasked with
preparing a healthy meal while staying under a budget. There were tasting stations all around
the room and I went about sampling what they had to offer. While it wasn’t quite the gourmet food
that I had tasted last week during the ‘Meals On Wheels’ program, it was still delicious. The young chefs certainly deserved kudos for pulling that
off. Our team was at the various ‘Green Team’ stations and at one stage I
saw Rich and his daughter standing at different locations in the exact same
pose. I took a picture of them
individually to post on the One Brick website under the caption, “Like Father Like Daughter”. And that was indeed true since she has
inherited his mannerisms, temperament as well as the overall demeanor that
makes him likable.
 |
| We had made the official program! |
The people would be leaving soon
and so I came down to the coat check where all of us would be required to
dispense the hundreds of coats.
Wilson had done a great job of organizing everything numerically and so
it would be easy for us to distribute. The groups started arriving and soon it got busy. Our entire
team was at hand and we had a system in the back room where the people in front
would call out a number and since we had people in each aisle, we were able to
hand the coats to the folks in the front in no time. We were asking that the guests recycle their name-tags, but
if they wanted to keep it as a souvenir, we would request that they at least
give back the plastic lanyards.
Around 9 pm there were only a few coats left, including one that almost
all the volunteers liked and were thinking of taking for themselves. Since it got slow, people started
talking about how they were looking forward to a beer, and Kinga asked Wilson
and me to arrange for some beer and wine from upstairs. We took the elevator
back up and saw that people were breaking down the party and packing up. We found a case of beer lying about and
Wilson picked it up while I grabbed a couple of bottles of wine – operating
under the assumption that it was okay to do so. We came down to much cheers and celebrations, while Kinga
found it amusing that we had got the beer and wine without really asking anyone
for permission. We all left after
9:30 and it had been a typical One Brick gala event that the volunteers had enjoyed. It had started with an orientation last week and today included me tasting the food that they are trying to implement in the
schools. Based on what I had seen,
the student's diet is in good hands.
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