Volunteer at Events DC Nation's Triathlon 2015

As I started the topic of my event volunteer experiences, all the memorable scenes came up to my mind, I have helped out several events during this semester such as:

-HSMAI's MEET Conference, September 2015

-2015 Events DC Nation's Triathlon, September 2015

-Welcome of Chinese President's Visit, September 2015

-Taste of DC, October 2015

-XX ANOC General Assembly,  October 2015

-Fudan Washington Forum, November 2015

I can pour millions of words on those experiences but the most impressive one would be volunteer at "Nation's Triathlon". I will share some of good and bad points of their volunteer management from my personal view.

Overall Experience:

2015 Events DC Nation’s Triathlon was taken place on September 13th, but the volunteer shifts started from athletes’ registration on the 11th. The event was raising money and benefited to the "Leukemia&Lymphoma Society".

I registered three shifts each day, and my positions were helping with Sports and Fitness Expo, body marking/bike racking, and helping with bike in/out on the race day. Overall, it was a good experience, I met interesting people, got a little acquaintance of “triathlon” (before this, I knew nothing).

Good points:

1) The organizer promoted the volunteer opportunity very well.

Events DC did a good job to socialize and getting people to volunteer. As I know, volunteer of this event came from different organizations, students like me got emails from our faculty, another lady was from the Society Association which the event benefit to, another guy was volunteering for military service reason, and some others belong to different sports clubs and they volunteered full time for registration days and may waive the registration fee ranging from $95-260, yeah, that's a big deal!  

And when it came to early October, two weeks before the ANOC General Assembly, emails were sent to all Nation's Triathlon volunteers to call for our repeat participation in another sport event. I think they were really good at those volunteer appeals. 

Thank you email for recognition

2) Volunteers got recognition!

I feel I was appreciated for my volunteer work, an email letter was sent to me one week after the event saying I deserve a metal! blog was posted on the event’s official website, and pictures of the “green shirts” were posted on the website too. I feel I was valuable for them!

3) Good timing on rotation.
There were 3 shifts each day, 4 hours for each shift, which was a good timing for volunteer's rotation, so that volunteers would not get too tired. Also lunch and snacks were provided during the shifts to refuel the energy.

Things need to be improved:

1) The process of training the volunteers.

Little information were collected when I registered the volunteer, and there was no training or briefing before each shift, some of the students were from high school and they were not helpful.
Also a lot of information about the event were not given, so I was confused with a lot of guests' questions. I think it is essential to train the volunteers before they start to work.

2) Insufficient Risk Management.

Weather is a big risk for outdoor events especially sport events, weather was cold and drizzling on September 12th, so athletes were worried about the weather on the next day. We have been told that the men’s swimming part of 2014 was cancelled because of bad weather, but no one informed us what was the "trigger" of cancellation for this year, so we were not able to respond the athletes' question, and I think this is an inadequate point for risk management.

In conclusion, volunteer is a good opportunity to know people and gain skills, I have been involved in all kinds of volunteer activities for many years and I will keep doing it. 

Bonnie the "Green-Shirt"!