Give a Day, Get a Day

Disney is currently offering a promotion where you can volunteer for a day and earn a 1-day ticket for admission to one of Disney's theme parks. Originally, we didn't consider participating in this because we have annual passes to Disney, so a free one-day ticket wouldn't benefit us. Now, I know that's not what this is about, but I think we can all admit that very little of what we do is actually altruistic!

(NOTE: If you don't care about the details of how Disney got connected with HandsOn Network or how you find out how/where to volunteer with or without getting the Disney perk, do yourself a favor and scroll down to the pictures below. :))

Well, we recently learned that, if you have an annual pass or a multi-day ticket, you can turn in the vouchers for Fastpasses instead of park passes. For those of you unfamiliar with Disney, a Fastpass is a free pass you get with your ticket to the park that day that allows you to bypass the line for a ride, go do something else, and come back later. It's a huge perk, but you can only get one Fastpass per hour. Well, these vouchers allow you to get multiple tickets at once (I'm VERY much boiling down the rules because I assume most of you don't care about this, but if you're one of my Disney friends and are curious, email me and I'll fill you in).

Disney partnered with Hands On Network, the largest volunteering organization in the United States. It was started as Hands On Atlanta 20 years ago, the first volunteering organization of its kind in our country. Eventually, other cities founded their own agencies, and the Hands On Network was born.

A few years ago, President George W. Bush called for 1000 points of light - that we as a nation would embrace the spirit of volunteerism and community service. HandsOn Network then merged with the Points of Light Institute.

Last year, Disney contacted the HandsOn Network to assist in the 2010 promotion. It took 9 months to get the program into place, and since launched, 10,000 organizations have signed on to get volunteers.

This is pretty cool stuff - HandsOn Network is a one-stop shop for finding volunteer activities. If you want to volunteer with them to get a Disney one-day free theme park admission, you go to Disney's website here. Scroll down and put in your zip code. You'll find a plethora of opportunities around you. And with Disney's involvement, any activity that shows up is one you can be confident Disney will approve. If you want to volunteer with HandsOn apart from Disney, go to the website I provided above to find opportunities in your area.

With all that in mind, we opted to participate in Project Linus. This organization provides blankets to babies that are premature or in the NICU. A nice thing about the Project Linus chapter we signed up with is that they are sending their blankets to Haiti! So we get to be a part of the Haitian relief efforts AND get a Disney perk! Below is a photo documentation of our experience:

I showed Hannah on Google Maps where Haiti was (sorry for the computer screen's blare) and explained why they needed our blankets.

This is one of the blankets my sister purchased. We had to cut off all the finished edges to make the blanket to Project Linus' specifications. There was no sewing involved, which is good, because I haven't sewn since 8th grade home ec, and even then, I sewed my stuffed bear's head on incorrectly!

Here is Miss measuring how much of the edge needs to be cut off.

I'm hard at work here, cutting, cutting, and cutting!

More measuring... Oliver is providing supervision for the activity.

Hannah enjoyed using the scrap pieces as decorative scarves. :)

And they enjoyed bonding. (Hannah was "being a puppy", one of her favorite games, so forgive the "panting" face.)

This was the part where I cut the edges into 4-inch long strips 1 inch apart around the entire blanket. That took a while...

... so we took a break and I was a lion for a while. :)

The fleece was everywhere!

Miss was hard at work cutting her strips around the other fleece blanket (we both opted to participate by making 2 blankets)...

... I was hard at work on my blanket (by now I had moved on to cutting slits in the top of each 4 x 1 strip so that the strip could be pushed through, essentially tying it in place) - notice all the fleece bits on me, too...

... and Hannah was hard at work playing barnyard. :)

Finally, I was finished, so I smiled and showed off my creation...

... but Missy liked the shot that showed my utter exhaustion better. :)

And, a while later, Missy finished her blanket.

This took us about 3 hours total - the first blanket took longer because we were finding our way through the instructions. The next morning, we got up and drove to a suburb of Cincinnati to drop off the blankets. Don't you love their slogan?

The church collecting the blankets had quite a set-up: as you walked in, they gave you slips to write down your names and the email address you used to register with Hands On/Disney for the volunteering activity. Inside, there were tables with candy, and in the center of the room they had staff collecting the blankets and depositing them directly into their collection bin.

And that was it! We were done. It took us 3 hours to do, an hour to get to the church and back, and 5 minutes to actually drop things off! It was a fun experience, though, and I like knowing our blankets are en route to Haiti. We got our vouchers by email on Wednesday - 4 days later! Pretty quick turn around, if you ask me. Hannah enjoyed it, too. With Disney, no one under 6 is eligible, but she got to watch us volunteer. We listened to Disney music in the car, went to McDonald's for breakfast, and took a few pieces of candy at the church.

It was a great experience, and it will be fun to do it again. Not every activity involves volunteering for hours at a soup kitchen - honestly, though, I've always wanted to do that - but that's hard to do with small children in tow. Let me know if you've volunteered with this or another organization and how it went!