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Jan. 13th, 2011 09:59 pmI went to volunteer to help the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation yesterday. They're preparing for their month-long awareness/canvassing effort for February (heart month!).
It was stunning. There were crates and crates of red booklet-things that canvassers would be given, with brochures and envelopes and receipts and pins in them. Everything looked the same from the outside - the contents of the crates were virtually indistinguishable. There was a staggering amount of repetitive admin things to do: for one thing, the last volunteer group had somehow put all the unlabeled envelopes into the packs, and so half the volunteer group spent an hour fixing it. Just labeling all the crates - properly - was a whole other job. And omg, sticking stickers. On all the brochures. (Well, not all. There must have been thousands of them.) And a giant, two-hundred-sixty-seven page stack of paper with the area and district codes written on them, with all the canvassers' names on them. Another volunteer and I started combing through, looking for groups with less than eight people, and writing it down: one person to name the district, the other to record. We had to switch several times because of hand cramping, and we'd only gotten to page sixty-five. OMG. Much respect for the branch office now. They handle everything for two provinces, I think; they must all be going slightly nuts now, trying to get everything ready for February.
With all the volume of paper that I handled (I began to do everything in autopilot by the first half hour; I combed through literally crates and crates) I'm really surprised I didn't get a paper cut XD
It was stunning. There were crates and crates of red booklet-things that canvassers would be given, with brochures and envelopes and receipts and pins in them. Everything looked the same from the outside - the contents of the crates were virtually indistinguishable. There was a staggering amount of repetitive admin things to do: for one thing, the last volunteer group had somehow put all the unlabeled envelopes into the packs, and so half the volunteer group spent an hour fixing it. Just labeling all the crates - properly - was a whole other job. And omg, sticking stickers. On all the brochures. (Well, not all. There must have been thousands of them.) And a giant, two-hundred-sixty-seven page stack of paper with the area and district codes written on them, with all the canvassers' names on them. Another volunteer and I started combing through, looking for groups with less than eight people, and writing it down: one person to name the district, the other to record. We had to switch several times because of hand cramping, and we'd only gotten to page sixty-five. OMG. Much respect for the branch office now. They handle everything for two provinces, I think; they must all be going slightly nuts now, trying to get everything ready for February.
With all the volume of paper that I handled (I began to do everything in autopilot by the first half hour; I combed through literally crates and crates) I'm really surprised I didn't get a paper cut XD
