Volunteer

Tree Adoption Agency: Help or organize the tree adoption agency, making sure people now what to plant, how to plant it, and how to take care of their new, baby trees.

Education Classroom Set-up: Fifteen speakers will be in four rooms, some of whom are quite famous, plus there’s a kids’ activity room AND garden tours leave from the brig. We will need you to make their rooms ready and perfect…eg. Help set up tables, chairs, and maybe the screen and AV equipment in the ‘Brig’. This happens the night before or early in the day (7-10am)

Education Classroom Management: We might have more people than we can seat: so someone will have to manage the lines (hand out the right number of free tickets, and guard the door) for speakers; we need folks to direct people to their rooms (and the bathrooms); and what if the laptop won’t work with the projector? Eek! So we need hall monitors, greeters, and tech-trouble shooters.

Outdoor Set-up: We will have thirty outdoor vendors and non-profit booths, tree climbing, tree pruning, transplanting and planting demonstrations, and a parade outside. That’s a lot. We will need people to direct boothers and demonstrators, help them load and unload, tell them to move their cars, etc. We will have one pre-meeting to go over logistics, and we’ll get a crew chief. Can you help?

Entertainment Set-up and Assistants: the New Old Time Chautauqua will have forty performers on stage and off. We need to help set up chairs, tables, the stage, lighting, sound system, and find and put out and haul off some ‘rugs’ for the kids to sit on up front near the stage. Oh, and they need some big curtains strung up too! That means a lot of bodies to help! And if you have stage craft experience...we really need you! Come early or stay late. Two shifts for these guys. Oh, and what about décor?

Signage Crew: At the festival of trees there will be lots of people going lots of places. Let’s not let them get lost! We need a carpenter to make a giant ‘events ‘tree’ of signs- like in Fremont. On it are arrows showing the way to restrooms, classes, food, entertainment, parking, etc. Plus more specific signs....everywhere! We need schedule of speakers signs in the Brig, schedule of entertainment, schedule of demonstrations...you get the picture. Speaker parking this way, entertainer parking that way…. Can you help with signage-- make some? Put-up? Take-down? Volunteers attend one logistics pre-meeting.

Hospitality: 15 speakers, 100 volunteers, 50 entertainers need care and feeding. We must provide three pleasant ‘green rooms’-nice places for people to relax, eat and recuperate. Each will need chairs, tables, ice chest, paper cups, etc. As it turns out, everybody, not just armies, march on their stomachs. We have a $500 food and beverage budget, but we need you to transform it into…well…food and beverages.

Parade Assistants: The New Old Time Chautauqua will be heading up two fabulous parades with the band, the jugglers and the stilt walkers. But we’d like to invite the public to bring their own costumes. Anyone who can field a costume or group of costumes representing some part of the Urban Forest (trees, birds, bugs, invasives) is welcome to participate. And we’ll need someone to head-up this part of the parade (talk to folks who want to participate, tell them what to do, and where to go). Is that you?

Recycling and Garbage: We’re nothing if not ecologically correct. Can you help manage the refuse of the day?

Traffic Control: You too can wear a cool orange vest and tell people where to go, in a nice way. There are three separate parking areas for three different groups of people: vendors and entertainers, the public, and the event staff. And, you know, we’ve got to keep the roads clear for the fire trucks when the fire walkers bump into the paper Mache trees. People really appreciate a little direction. Let us know if you are a traffic control kinda person.

The ‘take-down’ crew: At the end of the event we’ve got to help everybody get packed up and out! We need ‘fresh horses’ for the end of the day when everyone else is already very tired. Be a hero, come at the end!

After-Party. Set up the aforementioned after party!

We look forward to hearing from you! Please email (info@plantamnesty.org) or call us at (206) 783-9813.