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Nov 10, 2007 - Hope Walks |
 I had my first chance to participate in planning a walkathon. Not ever having been in a marathon or walkathon, I really had no idea what to expect. Fortunately, my team had a very small part in planning - we just helped out where needed. It was a delight to see 700 people show up to walk to benefit widows and orphans in Africa!
Upon arriving, walkers checked in at the registration tables. They picked up their shirt and a number that represented which child they were walking for.
Then everyone lined up at the starting line, which was marked by a huge balloon arch. The overcast weather was perfect for walking. Pastor Ray Johnston gave a motivational talk casting the big picture and then asked, "How many of you have knee problems? We will be in the back, participating in 'Hope Limps.'"
There's a cool product called chalk spray where you can spray onto stencils. Eventually the chalk just disappears. Footprints were sprayed along the pathway to help people know where to go, since the walk was in a park (William Land Park in Sacramento).
The team also did a fantastic job creating "experiences" for people to understand the contrast in life between Congo and the United States. They created a child's bedroom, and at the same time showed that the same space houses an entire family in the Congo.
God was gracious. Rain was forecast but the weather held until we started packing up. Once we were almost done, it started to drizzle!
$37,164 was raised to benefit AIDS orphans. The group that raised the most money was the 5th and 6th grade children at Bayside Church. What a great example they are to the rest of us!
Lessons learned:
• The missions team did a great job in utilizing volunteers to plan the event. They had key people overseeing areas and as a result these people really owned the event from beginning to end.
• Kids can do an amazing job. There were a few young children on the team who went around to schools and classmates and got them enthusiastically involved in the event! It was also neat to see the fund raising kids walking around with shirts that said, "900 lives saved" ($1 raised saves the life of one child).
• Have a briefing session of all team members at the beginning of the day. With last minute changes, some leaders didn't hear all the most current news and were giving out wrong information.
• Don't try to upgrade your computer software the few days before the event. I sadly tried to upgrade to OS X Leopard on my Mac... which killed my hard drive, gave me a lovely blue screen, took my computer out of comission for a few days where I couldn't print, back up, and corrupted some files, had missing fonts, etc. All sorts of fun stuff! Bad timing - an important document I had to access was on my computer! Now, a few weeks later, my computer is finally back to almost full functioning... after reinstalling many of my programs and spending countless lost hours scouring forums trying to figure out how to fix all the problems!
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