Volunteering Rocks,! A new group of wedding professionals who enjoy volunteering their time together, had their second event this Tuesday at The Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose (also the second time volunteering with this organization.

The first person I saw when I arrived was Robbie Schlosser of The Magnolia Jazz Band, who I had met before at a Silicon Vally NACE meeting. We were joined by Volunteering Rocks! members, as well as volunteers of other organizations. Our group leader, Rich Amooi, the owner of Hey Mr. DJ, arranged for members of our group to work together at the various jobs that were being given out.

One of the jobs was described as requiring two people who would be communicating with each other the whole time. I suggested Christina Romero, the wedding coordinator owner of Elegant Occasions, who I had just met and talked with a few minutes before take that job and we did. We had to assemble and line up boxes to be filled with food donations.

Christina and I made boxes so fast that a few times we had to slow down to let others opening food and filling them catch up. During one of our purposeful slow downs, I noticed Oren Arieli of Awesome Shot Studios taking videos on a Flip of our group, so I decided to start using my Leica to take some no flash photos of the group. Here’s Oren posing for my camera.

Rich did a great job taking videos and even captured a hilarious one in which he asked me to demonstrate making a boxing and I joked the tape gun would fail on camera, and it did (I’m trying to add the video here, should hopefully be up soon). I took this shot off one of his videos of me, in which he was interviewing me on the good shots I was taking, which started with me smiling as I reviewed a good shot on my viewfinder.

After he put down the video camera, Oren showed up in quite a few of my photos. In this one he’s clowning around while I was taking a quick portrait of Vince Ramirez from ProSound Entertainment. Vince and Oren have a little Facebook dialog going on this shot in which they claim it looks like Oren is being hatched from the box.

A quick portrait of Christina, Amy Frugoli of Twitterpated Weddings, and Lindsay.

I made a collage of photos of Rich, who decided to juggle cans for some fun shots.

At the end of the night our group, left, along with another group we had worked with, came together for a group photo. It was such a pleasure to work with such great and hardworking people. I had a lot of fun and look forward to the next Volunteering Rocks! event.

]]> http://www.notsostilllife.com/volunteering-rocks-networking-and-volunteering-event/feed 0 http://www.notsostilllife.com/volunteering-hotel-de-zink http://www.notsostilllife.com/volunteering-hotel-de-zink#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:54:19 +0000 Danielle Stolman http://notsostilllife.wordpress.com/?p=494  

Sunday is usually my day to sleep in late, yet today found my alarm going off at 4:00 a.m. this morning. This month Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, is the host church for the Hotel de Zink, a program which houses members of the homeless community and provides three nutritious meals daily for them. The program is named after a kind police officer who during the depression allowed homeless individuals to stay in his police station on rainy evenings.

Although I’d heard of the program before, this year when I received an email from Joyce and Ron who were coordinating the volunteers for this morning’s breakfast, I knew it was time for me to help out. Colleen and I were at the church at 6:00 a.m. with pumpkin and chocolate and orange scones (Colleen) and grape and orange juice (me) as requested. When we arrived we found out Joyce and Ron had been there even earlier cooking pancakes. Their facial expressions ranged from serious to joyful as they made perfectly golden pancakes and tasty scrambled eggs with ham.

It was great meeting others who were volunteering as well including Cat and Ian. A quick group portrait before breakfast is served.

The homeless individuals (who I was not allowed to photograph to protect their privacy) had many great choices of things to eat. The grocery bags on the bottom shelf are filled with lunches for them to take with them. The lunches included a full meal, and homemade cards of encouragements. It was an honor to be able to work with such dedicated volunteers in the early morning hours.

Reid Airport, in San Jose, CA, is a small private airport which I’d passed often, yet never had a reason to stop in until recently. Colleen and I joined other photographers to volunteer at a special Take Flight for Kids event, in which over 100 disabled children, along with their families, were given the chance to take a flight on a small airplane. For many, this was the first time they had been in, or even near, a plane.

This was a great filled with an amazing spirit of cooperation as the pilots, air traffic controllers, photographers, escorts to and from the plane, and many others working the even were all volunteers. Although I am not permitted to share names of the children who took part, I am able to share some photos of the children and their families who consented to having their images displayed publicly.

In this shot, the determined look of the boy makes it look like getting into planes is almost routine for him.

The children were even permitted to take command of the steering wheel, at least with the plane on the ground.

Upon arriving back at the airport, children were given big hugs for their bravery.

It was wonderful having the chance to interact with Colleen and newly made friends. We were allowed to work together all day both escorting passengers on and off planes, and helping capture the moments with cameras. Here’s one last one of Colleen on the wing prior to take off.