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Dec 31, 2007 - Youth Event: The Price Is Right

This is a guest post by Corrie Haffly, who describes an outstanding event her church did for New Year's Eve. Thank you, Corrie!

Every year at First Baptist Church of Davis, CA, the youth staff and a host of other volunteers put on a New Year’s Eve event for junior high and high school students.
The evening starts with a large group meeting where door prizes (some donated from local businesses) are awarded. Then, the kids disperse to different activities around the church campus. Volunteer servers carry around trays of snacks and goodies to the students (who love being served and having the food come to them!). The evening culminates in another large group meeting with brief message, more door prizes, a countdown to the new year, and a lip-sync contest.

The main meeting room is usually decorated according to a theme. This year, we set up the main building as “FBC Studios.” I designed the logo as a mashup between our church logo (which has a sun) and the NBC peacock logo. We cut out paper letters and logo pieces and stuck them on a painted sign with clear contact paper to be somewhat weather-proof.

Immediately inside in the small foyer were parody posters of TV shows. A volunteer had taken photos of the pastors and youth staff, and I spent a few hours the day before the event using Photoshop to create the posters from scratch. The posters were printed at Kinkos and posted in the foyer, outlined with Christmas lights.

The main room was decorated as if for a “live taping” of The Price is Right. Another volunteer painted the plywood backdrops for the main set, while others of us built the other set pieces.

The large Plinko board had a wooden frame for support and painted cardboard edging for the rounded borders. A volunteer had created wooden discs to drop down through the nails (hammered in by yours truly and my husband Steve). The discs made a pleasing musical sound as they hit the nails, although we found that we had to wrap rubber bands around the edges of the discs and wax the discs by rubbing them on the inside of dismembered paper cups or else they had a tendency to stick.

Contestant’s Row was a basic piece of plywood with an upper piece set at a slight angle. We ran out of 2x4’s to build a real support structure for it and leaned it up against chairs instead! Equally makeshift was the rolling prize stand – a piece of painted plywood with three paper-wrapped buckets. We nailed stakes to the plywood which held two-sided cardboard discs – one side for the golf ball game and the other side to represent Plinko.

The game show format ended up providing a fun way to distribute door prizes instead of simply drawing name after name from the raffle box. A youth volunteer hosted as “Bob Barker” with his friend wearing a wig to act as a “Barker beauty,” and the youth pastor, who has a deep voice, provided the funny product descriptions during the game show portion. To add to the excitement, all the other volunteers wore cheap white t-shirts with an ironed-on “I [heart] Bob Barker.”

During the activity time, a dodgeball tournament was set up in the youth center main room, while a separate room had a photo studio set up for group pictures (including funny costumes and props) and an inkjet printer to print copies of photos on-site. In the Sunday school rooms, one room had Nintendo Wiis set up, another room had a TV, DVDs, and board games, a bigger room had tables for a poker tournament, and another room was designated as the high-school-only room, decorated and managed by high schoolers with a chocolate fondue fountain and comfy couches. In the main meeting room, an inflatable sumo wrestling ring was set up between the large group meetings. Volunteers were assigned to supervise the different activities or to serve food.

There are about 150 junior high and high school students and 50 volunteers. Although volunteers were assigned to specific stations and jobs, the youth pastor stressed that our first priority was to spend time with the kids and gave people the freedom to drop what they were doing to talk to a kid who looked like they were alone. The evening was a great success, all participants having a great time and a safe place to celebrate the new year!

Lessons learned:

Be prepared. From previous years, we learned it was important to have all materials on-hand and “jobs” created for volunteers who were available to help with the décor, otherwise you end up with bored and disgruntled volunteers who are just standing around. This year, we weren’t as prepared as we could have been, but we also had fewer things that needed to be done and had fewer volunteers, so it worked out!
Reuse and recycle. Old set pieces had been saved in the attic which ended up being essential. The “FBC Studios” sign was an old sign board from a previous event which we painted black with leftover paint from another event. The plywood backdrop boards are basic two-piece hinged panels which have been reused for several different events. Large pieces of cardboard from previous sets had been stored and were cut up to make the edges of the Plinko board, the 2008 price tag sign, and more.
Take advantage of technology. We lacked the resources to make a giant wheel (used for the Showcase Showdown), so instead purchased The Price is Right DVD game and displayed the wheel portion of the game on the big screen. As cool as it was to be able to have a physical Plinko board, a Punch-a-bunch board, and other set pieces, we had to recognize our limitations!
Ask for donations. Home Depot generously provided a few sheets of plywood, some 2x4’s, two gallons of paint (from cancelled orders), and a few other miscellaneous supplies. We asked for any paint that they happened to have on hand and ended up with a cotton candy pink and minty green, which you can see used on the edges of the Plinko board!

Corrie Haffly is Angela Yee's little sister and fellow conspirator and lover of all things related to organizing and events. Corrie works in the Sacramento region as a web designer and is also the author of The Photoshop Anthology. Her personal blog can be found at http://corriehaffly.wordpress.com.

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