SYM recently was invited to "table" at a Christian
ministry fair for incoming freshmen at the University of Texas. We did this
last year and it was pretty successful. We did get one or two new volunteers
from the effort. This year I set goals of (a) not doing this alone, (b) giving
out at least 50 brochures, and obtaining at least 25 emails on our iPAD of
people who'd like to be reminded with more information once school starts.
I asked the president of our new student organization at UT,
Friends of Street Youth, to help me find a volunteer to do. And I asked a
regular volunteer to go around at one of our fellowship events for clients and
find two clients willing to help out with the event. So with a couple of people
to go with me, a schedule and a plan for the tabling event, we set off.
We quickly setup the table. It looked great. By using an
iPAD, we kept things simple. We had a few photos of UT students interacting
with clients at events and a call to action: Please share your email address on
your iPAD or text it to us to get more information.
There were 200 students at Ignite. They came into the fair
in three groups. My volunteers went to work. It was awesome! They did such a
great job of quickly explaining what we do and then asking if the student would
like to get involved.
I listened to a client tell it this way: "We help 60 to
80 street kids on the edge of UT campus every week. We help them with food,
clothing, prayer, Bible study and such." He would stop to let the student
ask for me or say something. "Sounds cool. What do I do?" He would
continue, "We need your help with events every day. You just hang out with
street youth. It really works. This is me in the picture. And now I'm going to
start college on August 23!"
We gave out 139 brochures, far surpassing my goal. And we
collected email addresses from 54 freshmen who want to know more about SYM! But
the best part came later.
Since I didn't really have any role at the fair outside of
planning and getting the people there, I walked around. I found a group of
students bunched together at the end of one of "groups." One girl was
very animated and excited. I could see she had a SYM flyer in her hand. She was
telling all her small group how exciting SYM was and how cool it was to see a life
transformed. She couldn't wait to volunteer. I offered the whole group flyers
and they all took them. Now that's excitement!
Come and join us!
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clients and supporters. Ph: (512) 553-3796
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