September 2016 – EventsInProgress

As part of the British Red Cross I was invited to help with their International Skillshare Conference at Stansted Airport. It lasts three days and people from other Red Cross societies around the world all come and share stories and experiences with each other and how they go about trying to raise the most money they can for the charity.

I was one of the volunteers at the event and it was great to see how a conference is done as this is an event I have not yet experienced. It was a lot of work though, I was working from 8am till 10pm each day. But it was also great fun, and I met some amazing people and also got the chance to network with a lot of event planners from around the world. Work placements maybe?

Again, I was the youngest volunteer there, everyone else was studying their masters, apparently it is really hard to get an internship with The British Red Cross so I must have done really well to get my place.

We were given personal itineraries and workshops that we we were in charge of and making sure that the speakers had everything they needed. We were on the registration desk at different times in the day and also had to help set up for the gala dinner on the last night which also showed me how planning a dinner works and having to sort out seating plans and such.

It was a really good experience and I loved it even though it was very tiring because i’ve met so many amazing people whilst being there. I cant wait to go back and do it all over again next year.

Experience: 9/10

Hours earned: 30

Running total of hours: 263.5

Skillshare conference

Gala Dinner

Skillshare conference

Interrnational skillshare conference

Skillshare conference

So I have decided to partake in a charity trip to Ecuador to help with conservation and to build schools in rural areas of the Amazon. However in order to go on this trip I have to fundraise the cost to go, which is £3000.

So as an event manager in training I am going to try and fundraise it through putting on events. The first one that I decided to do was a coffee morning. I picked this as it was a really simple one that wouldn’t require too much planning and i could do it before i started back at university.

It actually took a lot more planning than i had in mind and the fact that i was working twelve hour shifts everyday leading up to it meant i had to stay up very late, and suffered with little sleep for most of that week. My aim was to raise about £250 from the coffee morning. In total i actually raised £600. I was so happy that it was a success.

I had 2 marquees set up in the garden one with the cake and tea stands and the other with seating. Then I had a tombola and a carboot stand and a competition as well. The competition was you had to guess how many balloons were in the car and the closest guess won a bottle of champagne that had been kindly donated to me.

I had a group of about 7 people helping me on the day which I am so thankful to as I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own, it was so much busier than I thought it would be.

It was a fantastic day and I had people ringing me all night saying what a great day they had, and when I was going to do the next one.

I tried to treat it as if it was a big event, i did a risk assessment, I went through all the safety procedures and I hope that i did good job of it.

Experience: 8/10

Hours earned: 10

Running total of hours: 233.5