“For so long, it’s just been Mo and I steering this ship, so thank you for being here.”
This is how our first volunteer orientation meeting started. There would be no volunteer gone un-thanked, un-hugged or at least un-high-fived on the watch of these co-founders. To kick off the session, they had everyone introduce themselves and identify why they were attending. To nobody’s surprise, every single person included “I just love the ocean” in some part of their answer. Like Mo and Alex have repeatedly said, they are simply helping steer the passion that already exists for ocean conservation in our coastal community.
Last year, this same orientation meeting only pulled in 3 volunteers – 3 incredibly dedicated volunteers though! This year, over 20 people joined us at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic to go over preliminary planning and logistics. As boring as that might sound (it wasn’t, planning is great!), enVie helped make it more fun with a delicious box of vegan cookies, and watching the 2019 promo video sent chills through the room. (If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, you can do so here!)
The phrase from the video that stood out to me this time was “Stop, watch and listen”. It reminded me of what we are doing with Ocean’s Week Halifax – we’re listening to what numerous communities believe needs to be done. In the volunteer room, the science community was well-represented as per usual, but creatives, entrepreneurs, business people, students and even a whole family showed up to listen to their fellow community members and share the voices of their own, and for the ocean.
Does this sound like your group of people? If so, we’ll welcome you with open arms and cookies. We’ll be hosting another volunteer session soon to pick event assignments, so to join the OWHFX 2019 volunteer email list, shoot a quick message to volunteer.oceanweekhfx@gmail.com!
We can’t wait to hear from you. Don’t forget that the event submission deadline is today (Friday, May 17th)!
With all the love in the ocean,
Shaelyn & the OWHFX Committee