Location: American Cancer Society Office
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2014; 6:00-7:45
pm
I had missed the monthly meeting in September and the one
last week. Since we were just 4 days
away from our walk, the committee has been requested to come for a working
session – similar to the one we had last year.
I saw Katie in the lobby and we spent a fair amount of time trying to
enter through the wrong gate. Yeah,
missing 2 meetings does that to you! When we finally made it upstairs, we saw that
there was some meeting going on in the main conference room. Jessie asked us to go to the a smaller room where some of the volunteers were hard at work. From the looks of things, there was plenty to
do.
 |
| Cutouts for "Promise Garden" |
My task was to assemble a bag for the survivors and which
would include a magazine and couple of coupons.
Then I was to fold the bag and keep it aside since something else was
going in it. I asked that if we were going
to open it again, why fold it? But I
should really do as I was told. I also
mentioned that many of the coupons that we were inserting would perhaps end up
in garbage and we should find out a way of distilling the essence of that
message and putting it on the bag itself.
There
was a group cutting some pamphlets…and hundreds of those. Katie was folding a card for the caregivers
and another group was making lovely bags for the “Hope Stones” on which survivors would be able to paint
messages. Outside our conference room a
few volunteers were putting pink cutouts - that were shaped like women – on
small sticks and these would be planted as a “Promise Garden”. Yep, it
was a working session alright.
Carrie was now done with her
other meeting and came over to help out.
She told us about an interview that she was doing with ‘ABC’ tomorrow morning at crack of
dawn. Plus there was a photo shoot that
everyone was invited to on Friday morning.
I asked if any politicians would be there on Saturday and Le’Loni said
no, since they wanted to be able to talk and promote themselves and we would not
allow it. She also told us about ‘National Advocacy Day’ last month when
some members of ‘ACS’ went to DC and
lobbied for increase in funding for colon and breast cancer. Because of the nature of the work we were
doing this evening, there was ample opportunity for us to chat. We saw the pictures of the ‘Masquerade Ball’ fundraiser that was
held in the suburbs last month. I told
everyone about my recent marathon walk and the ladies said that they would
support me by cheering rather than doing 26 miles. Well, then we learned that Jessie actually
runs the marathon and so my walk wasn’t such a big deal after all.
Carrie told us that we had to
insert one more thing in the bag and that were the pamphlets that the volunteers
were cutting. It was a voucher for a
free photo frame and every person would get one. We were making about 350 of those and once we
were out of vouchers, we were done. So
we opened up all of the bags that we had made earlier and put the vouchers
inside. Then we started making more
bags. The pile of vouchers was never
ending, but we had an assembly line going with me and 3 other volunteers. While it was fun, the room was a bit hot and
I was feeling dehydrated. My fellow volunteers were fantastic company though and we
really had a great time. I said to them
that I remembered our kick-off in February like it was yesterday and now we were just days away.
Carrie then told us about our duties for Saturday. Any volunteers coming between 6-7 am would be
helping in planting the “garden”. Then we would be at different stations, where
we would supervise the other volunteers. We were to then get everyone to attend
the opening ceremony at 9:30 am. When
the walk starts, she asked if few of us could stay back to help and I said that
I could do that. Finally, we would take
a group picture and then help with breakdown which should be done by 1:30 pm. We were out of vouchers and decided to stop
for the evening, though there was still a lot of
work for Carrie and Jessie to do before Saturday. As I put on my jacket, I asked in jest “When is the walk again”. “Next
month”, said Carrie. We laughed and
left, looking forward to Saturday where all our planning over the last 9 months
would come to fruition.
No comments:
Post a Comment