General Updates and Brain Storming (Bullets at the bottom of the bulk of text for you tl;dr folk)

Since it's summer, and we all have off of school, I have a proposition. Our group has grown to nearly ten people, which is incredibly awesome, but when it comes to volunteering as a group in the hospital it's just too many. For those of you who were there when we met the children the first time, our space was limited and at times it was awkward because we had extras that didn't have much to do (there were, after all, only two children that really participated, and there were 5 of us). My suggested solution is to, of course, break us up into different meetings.

We can only visit on weekdays, and I want to say that we shouldn't send more than three or four people per meeting.

I've called the Child life Institute to ask when we can volunteer again, but Rachel wasn't in. When she calls back, I'm going to see what suggestions she has (maybe they have some other things we can help out with so we can send more people at once).

The first dates I'm going to ask for are Tuesday (6/15) and Thursday (6/17) and with the same times as last time. We lasted from about 12pm-3pm, but we could have stayed even longer. *(see edit) The people who drive themselves can play it by year, but everyone else plan on a three hour visit.

We also should break it up so that there is always someone around who knows some Spanish. Yes, I'm looking at you, Lauren and Juliana. Possibly you, too, Kat (if you're fluent and willing~). At first, let's try to revolve the people going. If transportation is not a problem for you, let me know and we'll put you on the backup list. If there's a day we schedule, and we weren't able to get three or four people to go, you'll be the one that can jump in for extra time. That way we can keep it fair and not-crowded. For the sake of organization and management, though, either Juliana or myself will probably be at every meeting until more of us get familiar with the people we're interacting with and the fine details of what we're doing. The less confusion the better.

CRAFT IDEAS! YOU HAS THEM, YES? We're looking for something that doesn't need to be incredibly structured. Last time, we started with aliens and ended up with jewelery and eyes glued to our foreheads. The kids were kind of mushy in spirit at first, so also think of something that doesn't need an incredible amount of energy - physical or mental. Be creative! This is the best part of our project!

Also, on the note of crafts...how should we be paying for craft supplies for these meetings? Should we all chip in, I dunno, $10 and budget that to last the summer or should we dip into our earnings thus far and use that? I think we should avoid taking anything out that isn't for the actual festival, but I don't want to have to ask you all to pay, either. Your thoughts and opinions?



TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read, for future reference)
- Any suggestions on how to break up our group so we don't have too many people at the hospital at once?
- Any craft ideas? Our age group is pretty young.
- When we buy craft supplies, should we dip into our earnings thus far, or should we chip in as a group and buy them with our own money?

THESE are the pressing questions at this point!

Also, I spoke with Vanessa, and she's waiting on their lawyer to find out about the insurance part of the park permit before they give us the paperwork we need. I thought we would have to do it ourselves, but I guess we'll wait to see what they have to say.

Hope that wasn't too much to read!

With love and stuff,
~Melissa

*EDIT: Okay, so, I talked to Rachel, and we're on for THURSDAY (6/17) at 1:30pm!!! We need SIX PEOPLE to come. And a parent. They're going to break us up into two groups of three. They ask that we do something sort of similar to last time and bring a parent, again, but this time without the siblings. Apparently the reason we need a parent is because we aren't registered as volunteers with the hospital. We'll have to work on that.

WHO CAN COME?