Location: Harry J. Schneider Apartments
Date: Friday, November 22, 2013; 5:30-8:00 pm
Wilson and I had teamed up to
lead this event with him as the EM and me functioning as the EC. However with the hurricane damage in
interior Illinois, Wilson was required in Peoria and would not be able to make
it in time. So he asked if I would
be willing to lead and I readily agreed.
This did not go well with the One Brick leadership who freaked out saying
that they needed a “trained manager”
and asked Wilson to find a replacement.
Wilson argued that with my experience as a Chicago Cares leader,
including projects like ‘Serve-a-thon’,
I was more than capable. It was
perhaps the mention of Chicago Cares that put them off, but eventually they
agreed and I was ready to commence my career as a One Brick Event Manager…kind
of since this was all unofficial!
It did not begin well since I was
one of the last to arrive, totally unbecoming of a One Brick EM. There were 13 volunteers present,
including some familiar faces like Rich and Irina. I checked-in with the Site rep Starr, who had met Wilson while she was
volunteering at a One Brick event and had mentioned about this property that she
manages. This is how he got the
project listed on the One Brick calendar.
I think this is an excellent way for One Brick to learn about potential
project opportunities, through the people who volunteer with us. This evening’s program was to benefit
the senior apartments of the ‘Habitat
Company’ and we would be helping out at their annual Thanksgiving
party. According to the
description on One Brick website, “Every
year the Chicago Housing Authority donates funds to provide free holiday events
to senior citizen residents, some of whom have little or no family contact. One Brick volunteers will assist with
decorating, serving meals to seniors, and cleaning up.”
 |
| The lovely table setting |
We would be serving approximately
65-70 seniors and while the food was being catered, we were required to do the
rest. There were 10 big
tables in the room and the first task was to lay down the table setting and I
assigned some volunteers to that task.
The food arrived and on the menu we had ‘Chicken with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy’ and side of vegetables and
bread. For dessert there were ‘Red Velvet Cookies’. Starr gave us all disposable aprons and
gloves and while 4 people would be serving, the rest were going to be the
runners. One person was required
to sit up front and sign-in the guests while giving them a red raffle ticket
and a white meal ticket. Once we had served them, we were to request that they hand us the white ticket. This seemed like overkill to me but
Starr mentioned that seeing new faces, some of the guests may take advantage to
get more food, especially since we did not have a lot to spare for
seconds. Well, she would know
best.
Rich is our resident “crowd control expert” and so he took
over the ticketing duties and sat by the door. A big line had already formed outside and we started letting
people in. Some of our volunteers
started serving soda while the rest lined up with trays and went down the
assembly line of servers as they put food on the plates. Then the runners went about serving,
while politely requesting the tickets rather than demanding them. That was the least we could do and I
had instructed the crew accordingly.
We had a diverse group of residents and some of them were Korean. They did
not speak much English and thus ignored our requests for tickets. Some others were a bit demanding and
were getting irritated that they were not being served faster. But many of them were genuinely happy
to see us and thanked us for serving them. After all the residents had been served, I asked the volunteers
to grab a plate and most sat with the guests and conversed. While this was going on, a gentleman
was entertaining everyone by singing; a one-man band for the evening. After dinner we served cookies and
people definitely enjoyed those. I’m
not sure what their health care provider would have to say about that, but
after all it was a Thanksgiving party and a cookie wouldn’t hurt for one
evening.
Before the guests left, Starr
asked all of us to come up to the microphone and introduce ourselves. The guests had appreciated our company
and once again thanked us for coming.
We cleaned up and then it was time to leave. I managed to convince 11 out of the 13 volunteers to come
out for a drink, showing that they had certainly enjoyed themselves. We went to a place called ‘Fireside’ and one of the volunteers
said that a resident had “hit on her”. She went on to say that she was
probably the most “age appropriate”
person for the residents and so this gentleman had taken his chances. I said that she should perhaps consider
herself to be the luckiest amongst all of us and be flattered. It was a fun evening and we laughed a
lot.
My first foray into managing
had gone smoothly though Wilson had sent me text messages constantly, checking
on each aspect of the evening.
That notwithstanding, I thought that I had done a good job and look forward to
more opportunities as an EM. But
this evening had been about more than that. The description has said that some of these seniors are
isolated and have no family contact.
Every living creature needs social interaction and nobody - absolutely
no one - should experience loneliness.
Yeah it really wasn’t Thanksgiving, but calling this evening's party that
had perhaps made the seniors feel as if they were a part of a family. And our volunteers had made them feel
at home. I couldn’t have been more proud
of my team.
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