The Annual Holiday Tree Lighting Event is sponsored by the City of Vancouver and the Rotary Foundation of Vancouver. The tree lighting event is held in the Propstra Square part of Esther Short Park. When we initially showed up to start setting up, the crowd was pretty sparse at best. It was a fairly chilly evening so coffee and hot chocolate were the perfect things to be handing out. We had SM's from 6 out of the 12 stores in our district in attendance and they all donated a 5gal cambro of coffee and hot chocolate. Before the actual tree lighting took place, choirs from local schools came out and sang all of our favorite Christmas carols.
During the event we passed out our samples, and it was nice volunteer at an event like this where we didn't get mobbed from all sides around us. People attending the event formed a nice line and patiently waited for their turn. It was fun staffing this part of the event/ I got to see a bunch of people from Vancouver that I haven't seen in a very long time. I'll definitely do this event next year. The Rotary Foundation people guesstimated that their were over 3000 people in attendance this year.
Thoughts for next year:
1) Cut way back on the amount of coffee offered. We probably could have done well with only 2 cambro's of coffee and the rest hot chocolate.
2) A lot of people wanted to donate for their beverages. Might be worth a discussion about accepting them and giving to the Rotary Foundation?
3) There was a food drive in conjunction with this event. Maybe we could do a month long food drive prior to the tree lighting and donate to the featured charity after the event.
