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| (Photo taken from UCF's webpage) |
Last Saturday 6th of September, UCF hosted the
American Heart Association’s Heart Walk at the Memory Mall. Accompanied with a
bunch of Full Sail University students from the “Sports Events And
Entertainment” class of the “Sports Marketing & Media” program, and the
course director Kathryn Stuart, we went as volunteers to support and help on
this amazing cause.
During the event I personally, spent the entire morning, from
4:30 AM until almost 12:00 PM helping around the UCF campus with different and
random duties. For instance, I started cleaning the water that was left after
the rain on the tents were sponsors were located. Also, I helped covering the
tables with cloths of different colors (Yellow, Blue and Red). Afterwards, with
help of my peers, I delivered brochures about the event on every tent,
specifying all the information that the participants of the walk needed. In
addition, I help to fill several trucks’ trunk with ice and bottles of water.
These tucks were afterwards located strategically on different points from
start to end of the walk. This was one of the most time consuming activities.
But the duty that took me more time to accomplish was to get in those trucks
and go around the Walk and puck up every trash box as well as every sign after
everyone finished the walk. At the end, with my peers and the course
instructor, we helped to clean and put everything into its proper place.
The event was superbly settled and organized, and with the
help of the volunteers it was a great success. The sponsors were perfectly
settles at the side of the main park were the people gathered before the place.
They also sent us, the volunteers, to give away specific products for each
sponsor like sunglasses, balloons, discounts, fruit and water. The event
greatly helped the community.
There was a specific sponsorship activation that I though it
was pretty remarkable. The Orlando Solar Bears settled and inflatable goal were
hockey fans from all ages could use to take some shots. The mascot of the team,
Shades, was alongside the inflatable goal to interact with the people. I think
that it was a great way to associate the club with charity events such as this
one; it creates a better brand image as well as brand awareness for the team.
Moreover, I didn’t experience any mayor issues during the
event. And this is because it was amazingly planned. The only minor problem was
that “Florida Blue” ran out of stock of the sunglasses they were giving out.
But that staff happens on events. For next time, they should realize how much
of a success were those blue and pink sunglasses and have a greater stock.
To conclude, I will say that the event organizers as managed
perfectly their volunteers, at least the ones I saw. Everyone was helping at
any time and when the volunteers finished what they were doing, they went to the
main tent and waited for more instructions. This wasn’t my first charity event;
I organized and helped in lots of them during high school back in Argentina.
But I still believe that there were not so many times that I saw an event such
well organized and executed. We even time finished everything early so we could
go straight to take a definitely disserved nap!
Link of the Photo: http://today.ucf.edu/18000-expected-for-first-heart-walk-at-ucf/
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