On Saturday (yesterday? yes--I guess it was yesterday) Alex and I drove to the Evangel Church of God in Dayton for a community resource fair. A few weeks ago, I arranged all of the details with Pam, the church's event planner. She told me that the people in their community needed a lot of help and support, and they wanted to put as many resources as possible in one place. They lwere looking for a one-stop place to send people to get plugged in to as many supports as possible. Perfect! We were a great fit for the fair, and Pam later told us that our Ohio Benefit Bank booth was the pride and joy of the event.
We arrived about half an hour before the event began at 11:00 a.m. to set up our booth. The rest of the fair (complete with inflatable jumping arenas, food, games, and music) was outside, but because we needed access to electricity for our computers, we were set up in a room just inside of the church. It wasn't quite far enough inside to block the live music blaring from the stage outside of our door, but it was a good enough set up. Take a look:
Throughout the day, Pam made several announcements from the stage about our booth and personally sent in as many people as she could find. We did 35 quick checks total, and a majority of the people we saw had no idea of the benefits and tax credits they were most likely eligible for. The OBB sites in Dayton will be busy after all of our referrals! It felt great to see the smiles (and relief) spread across the people's faces as we showed them which benefits they could possibly receive.
We also talked to several volunteers staffing the event, and we were even able to recruit potentially 3 new OBB sites through the ministries offered within the church!
We packed up and left a little before 5:30 p.m., feeling very good about the potential impact we had made on the 35 families we saw. It was one of the most rewarding days we've had so far in our year of service!
Today I'll be heading for Columbus around 4:00 p.m. to stay overnight for my In Service Training tomorrow.
Weekend? What weekend?
Hope ISO (is that the right acronym?) is going well! Don't forget to relax on Wednesday!
ReplyDelete