Org. 1 – Naperville Independent Film Festival

When I first moved back to Illinois from California I wanted to make sure that still stayed involve with film in some way. I searched the internet and discovered there was a film festival minutes from my house. I started going to the planning meetings and got involved with the many facets of planning a festival. Since then I have helped with 5 festivals and various marketing and fundraising events that have been planned to support the festival. Two summers ago the founders of the festival were granted their dreams of having a film they co-wrote produced. One of the writers also directed the film. I helped with auditions a couple years before and was an extra in the film (unfortunately I ended up on the cutting room floor). Last week they had the honor of seeing their film on the big screen at the Hollywood Palms in Naperville. A number of the actors were in attendance and over 500 people came to the premiere event. A portion of the proceeds were even donated to another of the places I volunteer with Women At Risk. To help support the filmmakers on behalf of the film festival and WAR I volunteered 2 hours in the box office helping to check people in and selling tickets. It was a fun night!!

Volunteer Challenge

I know I have said it before, but I love doing volunteer work. This passion really started in 2000 while I was doing my Walt Disney World College Program. In the 4 months I lived in Florida I volunteered to drive golfers around WDW, I wrapped Christmas gifts, and I got to help decorate a float for the Orange Bowl parade. This interest in volunteering led me to join the Burbank Jaycees while I lived in California where I met some dear friends and got do things like stand for 2 hours holding a bottle of wine to helping cast members of M.A.S.H. pick up their silent auction winnings. So in honor of my 40th birthday I decided to do a self-imposed volunteer challenge. I thought it would be fun to do a 40 day, 40 hour challenge. The tricky part to the challenge is that I have to put in at least 2 hours at 20 different volunteer organizations. I am still putting in 35-40 hours at my job and 6 hours of coaching each week of the challenge (well to be honest this week will only be 2 hours of coaching), and no meetings I attend count towards the challenge. The problem I have come across is that some of the groups I normally volunteer with have limited volunteer opportunities so I had to change the challenge to 45 days. As I write this introduction I am 37 days from my 40th birthday and I have put in 3 days of volunteering. I will write about each organization in future posts. I do have some restrictions to places I can volunteer because: 1. I don’t like being around blood or injured individuals so hospitals are out, 2. my allergies limit me to time I can spend around lots of animals so humane societies are out, and 3. I am not religious so I do not volunteer for specifically religious based organizations, i.e. churches. Next post I will start describing the organizations and what I did during my volunteer hours. 