Service Projects

 There are moments in my life that feel like snapshots, frozen in time.  That is how I feel about the impression to add a sentence to the emails that went out to future guest.  "Would your group like to do a service project at camp?"  I thought maybe a few would respond.  I didn't expect 80% to respond.  So we set about overhauling camp.  Painting, building, and repairing...everything.  

The easiest way to organize the project was to think of them as small jobs for about 12 people with 2 leaders.  Bigger groups were difficult to manage unless everyone could be doing the same thing.  So if we had a group of 36 youth, then we would need 3 jobs for them to do.  An Excel spreadsheet was used to plan which projects needed to be done first, which could wait and so on.  Emails were sent to communicate with the group what we were planning, so they would know how to prepare, like bringing gloves or wearing paint clothes. 

Then we would consider what prep work needed to be done like sanding, washing or buying supplies.  We then scheduled the prep work.  At some point I would do the project in my mind.  Then list all the items that would be gathered the night before or the morning of the project.  

For one project, we gave the leaders over the youth, cards with a numbered area they were to work.  What supplies they needed and what they were to do.  That helped because we had lots of little jobs for only 2-3 people.  The paint would get poured just before they arrived. To keep the youth motivated, we told them how much what they were doing would mean.  We complimented their efforts.  We reminded them they only had an hour so do as much as they could.