Monday, June 21, 2010

Hunger Banquet

For the student leaders of Students Against Hunger and Homelessness at FGCU:

You have money for this event, it is your decision if you want to cater the event (it is okay to Aramark now, they signed the agreement to pay farmworkers a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked), or to cook yourselves like at the last hunger banquet. Both ways worked, and both come with their own headaches. If catering is going to be too costly, then you can ask student government for help (I suggest talking to Marco). You have materials to pass out, and you can always go to Oxfam America to get more. They also change up the speech once in a while, so you may want to go get the updated version. You cannot fundraise at the event, even to collect cans, otherwise Student Government will not give you money for next year for the event.

You need to book the Student Union ballroom as soon as possible, your first day back if you can, because it goes soon. Marie (or whoever is there that year) in Campus Reservations will help you with setting up the floor-plan. They should still have the floor-plan from last year in the system, so just make sure to tell them of any changes you may want. The day of the event, the school will set up the room, so all you have to worry about is everything else 

Icebreaker: One year we had guests build their own house, then a “natural disaster” came and destroyed it. The other years we just had videos playing. You can do whatever you want.

Speech: Make sure that you get people who are actually good at talking, no one wants to listen to someone who stutters and stumbles or doesn’t speak loud enough. At the end you can have an open forum where people can come up and talk about hunger issues if they want. Or you can bring in people from the outside world to talk.

Tickets: Get a couple volunteers to pass out the tickets BEFORE people enter the room (they did a poor job of this last year), and tell them to hand it out in the correct amounts, 3:2:1 I think.

Timing is everything: The year before last we had to stall by playing videos because we went through the speech quicker than we thought, and the food hadn’t arrived yet. You want to at least seem like you know what you are doing!

Everyone knows this is my least favorite event, but people really enjoy it, and they get a free meal. So it is worth doing, and it does send a powerful message.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Breathe

Breathe! Everything will be just fine, do one thing at a time, it's not as bad as you think.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Trick-or-Canning

This is a post for the new officers of Students Against Hunger and Homelessness and the Lee County Homeless Coalition Honors Service Team to plan out the Trick-or-Canning event.

Trick-or-Canning


Prep work: Make two fliers, one asking students to help and volunteer and one to put in mailboxes in neighborhoods (important info to put on flyer: date, where food is going, what is being collected, student group(s) involved, and a way to donate if they are not home-like leaving a bag of food with their donation outside). Make sure to map out where you put the fliers, I just print out mapquest maps and highlight the areas we reach. Keep these! You will give them to your trick-or-canners the night of Halloween so they know what houses were reached and where to go. Posting fliers: took 1 ½ hours to reach three streets and used 75 fliers. Tell your volunteers to bring a suitcase, remember how much it helps!

Day of event: Have everyone sign in, get people into groups. Each group gets a set of directions and a sign with the flier on it, or some other identifying feature so that people know who you are. Make sure one person in each group has your number and you have theirs in case there is a problem sometime in the night. I like giving each person a glow stick, makes them feel like we care about their safety (which we do, of course). It gets dark about 7:00pm, and you should be done by 9:30pm. Each group can probably get through six streets or more in that time.