Aug 23, 2013

Generating Excitement


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!

"To know, love and serve street dependent youth."
Become a fan on Facebook!Mobile? No problem: m.StreetYouthMinistry.org.
I'm a notary for benefit of clients and supporters. Ph: (512) 553-3796
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