In an effort to outreach to parents with information on student success programs and extracurricular activities in the neighborhood, a civic group I belong to hosted an educational festival at a local park today. The festival came off rather well: there was an excellent turn-out, we had to make only two extra runs for more food and sodas, and the kids had a good time and went home with free books and silly hats. One disappointment during the day was that I was so caught up in keeping things flowing (because our number of core volunteers was so low) that I didn’t have an opportunity to just go out into the crowds and assess their enjoyment of the event.
This is the first time I’ve worked with a community group to plan an event such as today’s and while pleased with the day’s success, I was disappointed and often frustrated with the process that made it possible. A group of eight signed up to plan it, but the actual work to be done before- and on the day of the festival fell on the shoulders of three. It was difficult to hide my impatience with the leader of the planning team, who managed to delegate all of the work but wouldn’t commit to doing any of it himself. The main group consists of some twenty-five people, but not even five of them volunteered to work the day of the event. And while I am fairly easy-going, my tolerance for the latecomers to the planning team grew thin with each passing week as these folk would come in and criticize the decisions we had made and insist that our plans be changed around; they had plenty of opportunity to help shape the event in the beginning… where were they then? I spoke with a colleague who works as an event planner with all sorts of groups, and she explained to me that these are all common problems in the planning process — flakiness and lack of commitment will be high and the event will end up resting on the shoulders of two or three while the credit will go to the entire group and its leaders.
The festival was definitely a learning experience in group dynamics and event planning, and I’m all for doing it or something similar again. Yet there is such a disproportionate number of people who will spout their opinions but are nowhere to be found when it comes down to getting things done… I would like to believe that their intentions are good, but why be there if they are only going to balk at performing any work to back up those intentions? I haven’t decided if I should simply accept that people behave that way and work around it, or fight that and insist on dedication and shared work. I’m still too much of an idealist for my own good, I think.
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