working wednesday, fun friday

On Wednesday this week, I continued to call some of the stores we are hoping will donate prizes for our photo contest. I also called two Target stores that agreed to donate $25 gift cards to make arrangements to pick them up. Next, I searched for news articles on adoption in Ethiopia. I saved the articles in word documents and have an ongoing Excel Spreadsheet documenting all the articles that have been posted since September. Then, I continued to work on the member directory "clean-up" in Etapestry.

Today (Friday), Joint Council had another fundraising event. Every Friday in November, the teahouse/restaurant Teaism donates 10% of its sales to Joint Council. So, today, the staff of Joint Council went to the Teaism in Penn Quarter for lunch. Instead of going to the office for just two hours, I did some work at home and met everyone there. Lunch was delicious and a lot of fun. Afterwords, Tom, Rebecca, and I went to see Front Line, a movie about a homeless boy who is adopted by a family and becomes an NFL player. The movie was based off of a true story. The adoptive parents were the recipients of the Angels in Adoption award in 2009. The movie was excellent, and definitely relevant to Joint Council's theme that every child deserves a loving family. It was a really fun day and I really enjoyed spending time with my co-workers.

Work and Play

This Wednesday at Joint Council, I worked on a variety of things. I called stores that we had sent letters to about donating prizes for our photo contest to see if they had received them and faxed certain stores more information. Then, I helped another intern file information and agreement forms for Joint Council's annual conference for 2010. I also helped set up for the fundraising event that we had at the Spanish restaurant, La Tasca. Up to 20% of the revenue for the night went to Joint Council. We had an information table, a raffle for a free massage, and a few staff members were interviewed by Comcast. The waiters and waitresses also told all of their tables about the organization. I got a table with two other interns and one of their boyfriends and we ate delicious tapas! It was a pretty good day and fun to be with the Joint Council staff outside of work.

Busy Day!

Yesterday, I worked on letters we are sending to Target, Subway, and Best Buy for prize participation in the photo contest we are doing. The contest, Yesterday's Hope, Today's Family will raise money for Joint Council's mission to help orphans. I also worked on making events on facebook for upcoming Joint Council fundraisers. At Tapas for a Cause next Wednesday, 20% of food revenue from the restaurant Las Tasca will be donated to Joint Council. On every Friday in November, Teaism will donate 10% of its revenue to Joint Council. Lastly, on December 3, all proceeds from items sold between 7-9 pm at Ten Thousand Villages will go to Joint Council. Click on the links to learn more about the events and please come if you're interested and can help support Joint Council! Fundraisers like these are important- it costs a lot of money to process memberships, work internationally, and hold the meetings and confereneces necessary for Joint Council to address the many issues they are working with.

We also had a staff meeting today, talking about these upcoming events, the tasks we each are doing, and what will be going on in the future.

Alexa, another intern, taught me how to edit Joint Council's website. It was really interesting how the process works. I am learning many techinical skills here that will definitely help me in the future.