Gainesville CARES- S

Since December, the UNICEF club at my school has been involved in co-hosting a 5K, called the Red Ribbon Run, with the Gainesville Pride Community Center to raise money for Gainesville CARES, a new non-profit that is dedicated to providing resources to people with AIDS/HIV and to prevent its spread in the area.

The process has been quite frustrating, mostly because I find it hard to fit the meetings in to my schedule since they have to be convenient for the working adults that are helping out as well as the high school students. At first it was very overwhelming, because the supervisor was very intense and the only people on board were him and about 5 of us kids. But as time went on we got more people involved that did lots of helpful work. In general, I helped with publicizing the event and getting word out to people that work with my mom's non-profit because she works with people with HIV/AIDS in the community as well. We went through a long process of selecting a logo, finding an adequate date, trying to organize the registration program and getting enough volunteers. I tried to get some UF organizations, such as ONE and a few fraternities and sororities, to become involved when I volunteered at the annual AIDS Awareness Night on World AIDS Day, December 1 (2 hours). The people were very interested at the time, but unfortunately as time went on they started dropping out because the schedule issues were just too difficult to deal with.
Up to now I've attended 11 meetings to plan and organize the 5K, and I have learned that it is much more difficult and complex than I expected (11 hours). I've also done some extra work that includes outreach, looking for sponsors, and mapping the event on mapmyrun.com (2 hours). There is a month left until the Red Ribbon Run, and finally things are starting to fall together after a shaky beginning!
Meeting dates (up to March 22, 2011):
December 2, 16
January 11, 18
February 1, 15, 24
March 17, 22