Upcoming Volunteer Opportunties... including TOMORROW

Volunteer opportunities such as the ones below are great ways to get to know more about the co-op, spread the word about it, get to know committee members and generally help to get the co-op started. These are very fun, low pressure activities that basically entail talking to people and telling them why a food co-op is such a good idea. No one is thrown out there on their own the first time to volunteer and volunteering does not obligate anyone to future events... though we could always use more folks on our committees! Tomorrow: Spring Cleanup The 4th annual Philly Spring Cleanup is tomorrow and the co-op thought that it would be a good time to get out into the neighborhoods to talk to Spring Clean up participants. While we would love to hit every civic association and neighborhood group throughout South Philadelphia we just don’t have the manpower to do that, so some of our Outreach Committee members have reached out to a few groups where they live and have received the okay from civic associations to hang out and have folks fill out surveys and just generally be around to answer any questions. The plan: hand out surveys and talk to people. There will probably be some handing out of trash bags, rakes, recycling bins too. Email southphillyfoodcoop (at) gmail.com or respond as a comment to this blog post if you are interested in helping out at either of the opportunities listed below. We will gave a third, and possibly a fourth, location somewhere on the west side of Broad Street but those details are still being ironed out. LoMo - Partner with Julie, Outreach Committee member. Meet at 9am at South Philly High (2101 South Broad Street). Please let us know if you are interested in helping Julie out. Newbold Neighbors - Partner with Rachel, Outreach Committee member. Meet at 9:30 @ Ultimo (15th & Mifflin). Please let us know if you’re interested in helping Rachel out. ---------------------------------------------- April 30: Flavors of The Avenue East Passyunk Avenue will be bursting with flavor on the last Saturday of this month and we want to take advantage of that energy. From 12pm to 5pm we will have a table on East Passyunk somewhere between Dickinson and Morris and will be handing out brochures, asking people to fill out surveys and just generally talking up the foodie goodness of the Co-op. If you're interested in partnering up with Outreach Committee members Dan and Kat for all or part of the time, contact us at southphillyfoodcoop (at) gmail.com. We could use people at 11:30 to help set up. Dan and Kat will gladly give you the quick orientation on answering the most frequently asked questions. This event is rain or shine and if it rains we'll have a tent because our other event that day has a scheduled rain date. ---------------------------------------------- April 30: LoMo Spring Market and Community Fair (Rain date: May 7) Dozens of tables will be set up on Broad Street between Snyder Avenue & Jackson Street. Event goes from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. We should be covered with set-up but anyone who wants to help out can meet us at 8:30 to help out. Let us know how many hours you can help out by emailing southphillyfoodcoop (at) gmail.com or responding in the comments below. You'll be partnering up with committee members Julie (9am - 11am), Stephanie (11am - 1pm) or Cassie and Rachel (1pm - 3pm). We could also use volunteers to help with the planning process and have input into what we're going to do at this event. This will be a good opportunity to incorporate some family fun into the event. Last year we did a bake sale which was mildly successful mostly because we had a really terrific salesman helping us unload the table at the end of the day! We want to come up with an idea to attract people to the table. ---------------------------------------------- May 7: PEP Annual Plant Sale Looking for one or two more volunteers to help out at the PEP Annual Plant Sale on Saturday, May 7. It runs from 10am - 6pm at their office at 1200 South Broad Street. We can split it into 2 or 3 shifts of a few hours each. Partner up with committee member Rachel. This is an especially good volunteer activity for people who live west of Broad Street and want to help with our outreach efforts in that area. --------------------------------- Also, please note, we are going to try to hold a volunteer training session prior to these later events to give any prospective volunteers and idea of how to talk about the co-op. If you can't make that (time and place TBD), don't worry about it. One of our committee members will be at each event to answer any questions.