How To Plan A Service Project Within 48 Hours

On January 18, 2010, the DC AmeriCorps Leadership Council led 215 volunteers in a service project that took approximately 48 hours to plan! While most groups who took part on this historical day of service had undergone months of planning and organizing, the DC AmeriCorps Leadership Council managed to make a huge impact locally and globally.

On Friday evening all hope seemed to be lost as the last shot at a service project fell through the cracks because of unforeseen circumstances. While most individuals would throw in the towel and call it quits, the Council leaped into action pulling something out of thin air like Siegfried & Roy!

For those of you that don’t know, I currently serve as one of two C0-Directors for the DC AmeriCorps Leadership Council. While stressful, we made the project a HUGE success, and I’m going to share with you how it was done in such a short amount of time!

How did the DC AmeriCorps Leadership Council accomplish this feat?

Have A Plan

If you’re like most people who plan service projects, you think of anything and everything that could possibly happen. Sometimes Murphy’s Law can get the best of us, and you’ve simply got to be prepared. With only 26 letters in the alphabet, we had to resort to Greek letters. Scary, I know, but having a plan is always the key to success.

Stick To Your Plan

With only 48 hours of planning time, you don’t have time to eat, poop, or sleep. Stick to you plan. You don’t really need sleep, and you should know this by now. Take this as an opportunity to revisit all those times in college you spent cramming for a class you attended once. RedBull and 5 Hour Energy were created for a reason. Embrace them. Love them. Buy stock in them. You don’t have time to tend to your bodily functions… they can wait. When you’ve already gone through the alphabet, and you’re more than halfway through the Greek alphabet… realize that you’re running out of letters. You need letters for plans, and without them, you’re pretty much screwed.

Cash In On All Those Favors That Your Friends Owe You

Even if your friends don’t owe you anything, guilt trips work. I told one friend that I rescued them from being attacked by this vicious, blind Cocker Spaniel that had mange. I know it’s wrong, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get the job done!

Beg

It was the female rapping duo that said, “I ain’t too proud to beg.” I ain’t too proud to beg either, and when you desparately need friends to help you, you’ll beg too. Trust me. If you’ve got an iPod, you might as well play this jam on repeat… it’ll make begging a lot easier.

Execute. Execute. Execute.

You’ve probably organized some pretty awesome projects within 2 months, right? Think of a 48 hour service project like being on a game show. Sure, it’s a challenge, but I can honestly say nothing is more fun than putting together an event in the same amount of time it takes for a woman to give birth. It’s just… AWESOME!

I know the prescribed suggestions seem a bit bogus, and I’m pretty sure you’re wondering what a service project looks like when planned in only 48 hours, right? Here are a few statistics of what we managed to get in-kinded/donated:

• 1,323 granola bars
• 450 boxes of raisins
• 280 pairs of socks
• 220 toothbrushes
• 79 bottles of hand sanitizer
• 35 winter hats
• 120 plastic sheets
• 200 stationary kits
• 12 tubes of toothpaste
• 172 grocery bags
• 30 sticks of deodorant
• 9 boxes of chocolate
• 5 ponchos
• 300 bottles of water
• $1,120 for WorldVision to help with relief efforts in Haiti
• And… some AMAZING photos!

Unbelievable, right? We also had 40 letters to President Obama written by children sharing their “dream” and how they could help change their communities! You might be wondering why we had so many materials, right?

With the materials listed above, we were able to assemble 222 care packages for DC’s homeless! The care packages were distributed this past Saturday to CCNV.

So, within 48 hours, we successfully put together a project with local and global impact. If you’re ever faced with a service project dilemma, always remember that anything is possible!