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Back to School Block Party City of Garden Grove

Description:

The Chaplain with Riverside County Fire has asked us to attend this event. They partnered with the local Boys and Girls Club and others in the community to host this event where they gave away close to 1000 backpacks stuffed with school supplies to families in need. The goal was to have a "Books and Puppies/Dogs" Booth to underscore literacy. 875 guests attended we gave out over 300 + books. We were advised that we would have a canopy, chairs, water for dogs and rubber mat for dogs. Spoke with POC day before to confirm and also check about parking and entrance to event (which they set space aside for us). Unfortunately, we were not provided a canopy and our assigned spot was under a tree which at the current moment did provide shade cover, but by the event time we would be located in full sun. We requested to be moved to a different location and the only one available was again a temporarily shaded spot. As this was the only other option provided we set up there and figured we would move as necessary. Bari had brought a large mat that was helpful and Constance had a cooling mat for Kelda. We were given 3 large boxes of books and told to set them up however we liked. There were no volunteers assigned to our station for set up of books, crowd control or distribution of books which fell to team lead. Once the event started we were swamped. There were several families that brought their dogs to the event as well, which was another challenge. Bari and Constance did a fabulous job engaging the children and Kelda and Star provided the incentives for reading.

Kelda/Constance Howell, Star/Bari Boersma