The Austin Humanists at Work giveaways have been mostly interesting and often gratifying. But the group can adapt. Come see why in the March 2019 Recap.
When you’re an organization that sets up an event much like a flash mob, you have to be flexible. We’re always amazed that we can arrive from different places, meet up with volunteers, take in donations, set up and stock a giveaway line with items, serve individuals experiencing homelessness and tear it down in an about an hour or so. It takes some skill, some practice and a little bit of luck for things to go smoothly.
Occasionally, we’re forced to improvise.
At 3am in the morning on Sunday, there was a shooting that occurred around the usual giveaway spot under the bridge at 7th Street. Apparently there were two vehicles that were involved in accident that escalated into gunfire. KXAN has a full breakdown here.
In the past, we’ve had to relocate the morning of the giveaway due to big events that have caused some issues with where we normally set up (the Austin Marathon for one)…we’ve never encountered a crime scene. In this case, we moved to the parking lot under the bridge that is just south of the normal spot…and with some hard work by our volunteers, we were able to start the line with only a 10 minute delay.
As you might expect, we didn’t have the normal volume of people going through the line…we had 107 when we usually get anywhere from 140 to 200. However there were several folks that expressed gratitude that we were out there under the circumstances. We were glad to help.
In the future, we expect to have today’s spot be designated “Location B” for the times we need to shift our giveaway. We’ll put up more information about that once we’ve nailed it down.
In any case, we are so appreciative of all the volunteers that came out to help (including some first timers). Thank you for your time. We’d also like to thank all of our donors and sponsors that were very generous in providing us with the supplies to hand out to the people that go through out line. We couldn’t do it without you.
We’d also like to give a special shout out to Pak Mail on Metric. When you send us items from our Amazon Wish List, they go to the great guys at Pak Mail. Ever since the new management took over, they’ve been a dream to work with. If you need anything to do with shipping or you need a mail box, please give these guys a look. They’ve been very kind to our organization.
Next giveaway is April 21st (that’s Easter)! Hope to see you there.
