Serve-A-Thon 2014

Location: Elizabeth Woods Apartment

Date: Saturday, June 07, 2014; 8:00 am-1:00 pm

Chicago Cares started the process of identifying ‘Primary Leaders’ for ‘Serve-a-thon 2014’ very early this year and had reached out months ago asking for my interest and site preference.  I immediately said that I would prefer a project at a ‘Senior Center’, hoping to get the same location as last year.  However, they appointed me to another location and also cut the leaders under me to 1 instead of 2.  I asked both of my leaders from last year and while Claire said that she couldn't do it, Alisa agreed – which worked out well since they needed just 1 anyways.  A few days prior to the event, we had a conference call for the Primary Leaders, where the President of Chicago Cares emphasized our role for this year, especially promoting the key words, “Empower”, “Engage” and “Educate”.  Furthermore, this year a huge emphasis was going to be real time social media outreach.  Since I am far from an active participant in social media, I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out for my site.  Alisa and I had another conference call with our Chicago Cares Staff contact for our site, where we went over the project and our role on the day of.  We were scheduled to get 25 volunteers and looking at our duties – which were breakfast and Bingo - that appeared to be too many.  However we were told that we would need all of them and so be it.

They were ready for us

On Saturday morning I took a cab to the site and was shown to the community room where we would host our guests.  The lobby of the building, leading up to the entrance to this room was scheduled to be painted and I thought that this was poor timing for the management to have it today.  Soon Alisa arrived as well as our site representative Starr, with whom I had worked at One Brick’s Thanksgiving project for seniors last fall.  She had been fantastic back then and so I knew we would be fine today.  Starr let us inside the kitchen and I saw that there was a giant box from Chicago Cares waiting for us.  We took inventory and decided that while Alisa would be in charge of the kitchen, I would help with the outside.  There were several Bingo prizes and decorations and Starr said that if we handed out all of the prizes, we would be there till the evening.  So we decided not to display all of the prizes and the remaining ones could be utilized for the regular Chicago Cares project over here. 

'Flowers"

Our volunteers were supposed to arrive by 9:30 am, but 3 women showed up beforehand and said that they wanted to leave early to attend a colleague’s funeral.  I appreciated the fact that they wanted to honor their commitment, while also paying their respects to their colleague.  They were from ‘Habitat’, a company that manages many properties in Chicago for low-income seniors, including the one where we were at.  I assigned them to decorations and they got down to putting up streamers and balloons, with some artistic thought being put into the color schemes.  For example, I had asked them to put the serving utensils inside napkins and they started mixing colors by inserting yellow knives and forks in green napkins and vice versa.  One of them even started making flowers out of the colored tissue paper.  Volunteer’s like these definitely make my job easy!

As we were doing these, the rest of the ‘Habitat’ team of volunteers arrived, led by none other than their 'Vice President'.  I gathered everyone and gave them the welcome speech that had been provided by Chicago Cares.  It was to emphasize the significance of this day, get them excited and then assign duties.  Alisa and Starr also chimed in and finally I asked them to remove their ‘Smartphones’ and start posting either on ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’.  I was doing my bit by posting pictures every now and then and Chicago Cares was responding through by marking it as “favorite”.  Yep, that’s social media presence for you.

Alisa took her kitchen crew inside and I got the rest to decorate the remainder of the room and prepare for Bingo.  I mingled with our volunteers and spoke with several of them and since they were already a part of a company working with seniors, it wasn’t too difficult to communicate the importance of what we were doing.  It was time for the seniors to start arriving, but we were not getting the “rush” that we were anticipating.  Starr took a few volunteers with her on a recruitment mission, but we only managed to get half of the 80 residents in the community.  Well, whatever the number, we owed them a great experience and so I asked the volunteers to mingle with the guests.  We started by serving juice and coffee and then it was time for breakfast – which was the traditional bacon and eggs.  The volunteers were efficient in their serving and soon everyone had been fed.

Bingo prizes

We also started handing out Bingo cards and some people refused them, saying that they did not want to play though they would be more than happy to stick around.  Some ladies called me over and asked for a card with their lucky numbers and I found it for them.  We were all set and the 'Regional Manager' of the company had told me from the beginning that she wanted to call the game.  Based on her enthusiasm, she was the perfect person for this task and even I got scolded twice for chatting loudly! It's always interesting to see how the residents pick prizes and the most popular ones for today were detergents, towels and air fresheners; not so much the pill organizers.  Around 11:45 am we were out of the prizes on display, though there were several still in the box.  I said that we should do a final coverall Bingo for 3 prizes and selected the 3 most popular ones.  Soon we had our winners, but a lady came forward saying that a number had never been called throughout the game and see if it was missing from the Bingo balls that we had.  A quick investigation proved that she was right and since that number had been on her card, I gave her a consolation prize. 

The residents left and then all of us volunteers sat down family style for lunch eating from the sandwich boxes that had been delivered by Chicago Cares.  I chatted with some of the volunteers near me and learned that there was a married couple in the group, as well as a lady who had traveled 90 minutes from the suburbs to be here on a Saturday.  After lunch we did a reflection session where I thanked them for their service and Alisa spoke about the importance of volunteer experience at such events, since many are perhaps volunteering for the first time and we want to ensure that they have a good time.  We all thanked them and the VP of the company shook his head and said that it was us who needed to be thanked for giving this day to the residents. 

Another successful year

It was time for the volunteers to leave, but there was an issue since the bus that was supposed to wait had left!  We were waiting outside and I was on the phone with Chicago Cares who had to scramble to get us another one.  Eventually our ride arrived and it was a minor glitch on what had otherwise had been a perfect day.  We had no other issues, which was very different from all the hiccups of last year.  I rode the bus to ‘Daley Plaza’ and met with the Chicago Cares staff as well as some of the other leaders. We chatted about the experiences each of us had today and unanimously everyone said that it had been a terrific day.  I stayed there till 4 pm and then left just as the party was getting into full swing.  Thus ended another year of ‘Serve-a-thon’.  And like fine wine, it keeps getting better.