Author: sfericks

I am a big believer in community engagement and giving back. It starts with signing up for a board, volunteering a bar shift or helping with hot lunch at school. I want to teach my kids it’s important to make time for these things. Yes, as annoying as it might seem at times, many hands make light work. And if everyone had the same attitude, our long term volunteers wouldn’t be so burned out.

A few years ago parents would actually cook the meals at home, come to school and assembly them and offer foods like taco in a bag, pizza, subs and lasagna and much more. These days we order from local restaurants, take the food to the school and hand it out. It takes 45 min tops. And yet, sign up with dwindling. We can’t even get parents to commit to 45 min once a week. Or once a month if you consider taking turns. So why is that?

I had this conversation with a friend and she recently read an article by Anne Helen Peterson on “How Millennials became the burnout generation“. The article takes a historical look at how previous generations have set up our generation to be burnt out and run dry.

Yet here I am, telling you, together we can do it! If we all pitched in, it wouldn’t be so hard on any of us! We have 200 families with kids in the school. Imagine each family taking one turn. We would have enough volunteers to run hot lunches for almost 5 (!!) years if you consider school breaks and a summer off.

While I understand it takes two incomes in todays world to make ends meet, a lot of work places would support you spending a lunch hour helping, or taking 45 min off to volunteer for a good cause. Please consider taking part in the hot lunch program! We cooked hot dogs earlier this week, made a little video and show you how easy it can be! And FUN! Check the video out on our Instagram page! JOIN US! We would love to have you on our team and be a valued member!

Imagine you are to give a toast at your best friends wedding. You have to give the speech, there is no way around it. Now, how to go about it?

First of all, consider which story or stories you are going to share. You might want to paint a picture of your friendship over the years, so find a starting point. Then consider what the goal of your story is. To make people see how special your friend is? How lucky you are to have her in your life? Or to embarrass her on her biggest day? The goal will ultimately change the way your story goes. What to focus on. That’s your PLOT.

Now consider the setting of your story. Maybe you don’t want to focus on the parties your bestie got drunk at. Maybe the ones were she shined. Be considerate of your audience, too. The SETTINGS are important. It gives them a feel about your experience as if they are there with you.

You have the power to make them like her – or despise her. So choose how you want to represent your friend, yourself and any other characters within the story. You can be a hero, same as your friend, or ruin the whole speech by going off the rail. CHARACTERS are the main focus of your story.

The POINT OF VIEW in this case, most likely, is yours. How you see your friend, how the events felt to you. You are describing your experience. Let them be a part of that. Let them see how you see your friend. The wonderful person she is. With faults and flaws, but you love her anyways.

Lastly your CONFLICT can be how you both overcome challenges in your relationship or how you both together have overcome an obstacle. Or how the now beginning ‘never ending love story’ will conquer all.

In the end, you can apply those storytelling tools to any story. Giving a speech, writing a book, being a tour guide. You got this!

In one of my many jobs as a secretary for a local church, we brainstorm regularly how to engage the community as Sunday Church is certainly a thing of the past. We came up with the Hallmark Christmas Festival, trying to recreate the scenes of the movie, where the actors go into a Christmas Festival and string popcorn garlands or enjoy a deluxe hot chocolate and so on. We realized quickly we wouldn’t be able to pull if off all by ourselves, so we reached out to community organisations and business asking if they would like to offer a station in exchange for advertising for their business or organisation.

We decorated the church and were super excited when we had 4 other groups commit. In the end we ended up with even more! We advertised with flyers and on social media and we were happy with over 80 people showing up to participate in our #HallmarkChristmasKillam. Hopefully the “First Annual” of many more to come.

Here is my live tweet as we were getting the hot chocolate going, ponies arriving and people starting to set up their stations. Live tweeting a story is definitely not as easy as I expected! Follow along here:

Today I'll be live tweeting about our #HallmarkChristmasKillam as we are awaiting the crowds.
Stay tuned for more #EXSM3989 pic.twitter.com/7oo4aBAg1P

— Sandra Erickson (@eri20277) November 18, 2023

In the Fall of 2022 I had the opportunity to work as a translator on a bus tour for German tourists coming to Canada. Guests would arrive in Calgary and take the scenic route through the Canadian Rockies with stops in Banff, Golden and Abbotsford before boarding a cruise ship in Vancouver. Cheryl, the tour guide had over 20 years of experience and is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to history, facts, and pioneer stories. While we were driving through Jasper National Park, she would explain the Flora and Fauna of the area and point out specific trees or plants. And she telling us the story of the “Indian Paintbrush”, a flower, we could see growing along the highway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castilleja

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush

Quickly summarized in the version Cheryl told us, the Indian Paintbrush is a story of two indigenous people from opposing tribes falling in love. Of course, it’s the tribal chief’s daughter and another tribal chief’s son. The one tribe captured the injured man and the daughter helped nurse him back to health. Only to find out they intended to torture him later. She helped him escape and went with him, fearing punishment for this deed. She grew homesick and while trying to return to her camp, knew she wasn’t ever allowed to return. So, in Cheryl’s version the tribal son knew how homesick she was, but unable to return because of helping him, he drew a picture of her camp on bark, with a stick and her blood, from a gash on her leg. Once he finished, he threw the stick stained with her blood away and where the stick landed, “a little plant grew with a bush-like end, dyed with the blood of this girl, which became the first Indian Paintbrush.” https://owlcation.com/stem/The-Indian-Paintbrush And gifted her the painting as a thank you for choosing him over her camp.

What went wrong?

While Cheryl usually gets an “oohh” as a response when finishing the story, on this bus tour, there was no reaction. And I take the full blame. Because I didn’t know how the story ended or what to focus on while translating then pure facts, it took the emotional connection away.

It made me realize, storytelling is an art. Those extra sentences or descriptive vocabulary are important to convey a feeling, give a connection or help envision the story. Passangers on this bust tour won’t remember everything we told them. They will remember how we made them feel. If they felt relaxed and happy or stressed and angry. They won’t remember the height above sea level– which Germans seem to ask all the time – but the general feelings we shared. Did we laugh together and enjoy ourselves? We remember the emotions. That’s what another tour director, Mitch, owner of Trip School told us at his “WOW” Seminar I was able to attend after completing the tour. https://thetripschool.com/

While the example of the story I chose is a failed one, it was one I will remember. And it was a valuable lesson to slow down and take time. A good story takes time and shouldn’t be rushed. It’s good when you know where you want to end up with the story. What’s the goal? And then make sure to have all those elements within the story, to end up where you want to.