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A
Personal Perspective:
Last
year, Packing Day was on Saturday, 17 December 2005. I
arrived at the Kodak plant in Newlands Road and immediately spotted
a few people in bright yellow T-shirts with Santa hats and Reindeer
Horns sprouting out of their heads. They waved merrily and I
smiled right back at them!
After
registration, I went into the packing area. There was a
conveyor belt in the middle lined by boxes and pallets on either
side. People were moving along the conveyor belt placing food
and even bon-bons in a particular sequence to fit the
hamper-box. I was shown to the toys section and starting
wrapping presents. It was very organized. The presents were
divided into age-ranges from toddler through to
teenagers.
The
news crews from Channel Seven and Channel Ten arrived. They filmed
sequences at the conveyor belt and at the present-wrapping area and
interviewed quite a few people.
I then
progressed to sorting presents for distributing with the hampers to
fit the right ages marked on the delivery dockets. It was all very
professional – addresses with Melways references and no names that
identified families – I felt that it gave those families their
dignity.
All
this while, there was music playing (I found out that one of the
committee members is a DJ!) and people greeting each other and
enjoying themselves. Even the children helped out by playing on the
discarded boxes – their version of work, er, fun – jump up and down
on the cardboard boxes, yelling with delight and making new
friends!
Some of
the children helped by delivering fruit juice cartoons, snack bars
which kept our energy and enthusiasm up!
I took
a short rest and watched the hamper-production crank up as the
volunteers got more familiar with the process and even suggested
improvements to the committee members there! It was a marvel
to watch how the site had been organized to optimize the
process. There was even a forklift to carry out the hampers
in bulk to the loading area and a volunteer had the skill to
operate it.
Just
before 10 am, the baskets for Geelong were loaded first for
delivery. Someone told me that the trucks were taking those
hampers to a central point in Geelong where more volunteers were
waiting to pick up hampers to deliver to families.
It was
great to see volunteers arriving and leaving, many of those who
left also took a basket or more to deliver on their way home.
I kept up with the demand for matching presents to baskets pretty
well, it was becoming like second nature!
The
music continued to flow, the children’s level of excitement and fun
increased as more and more empty boxes arrived for recycling.
The present-wrapping had a minor crisis – we ran out of presents
for boys in the 8-10 age range. An emergency meeting convened
and a couple of volunteers visited the local stores to buy toys
from cash donations received in the morning at
registration.
All too
soon, it was my turn to leave. I took 2 baskets to deliver on
my way home in South Yarra. The first was a family with a
little boy. He ran circles around his father, exclaiming,
“present? Present?” and his face was a sight to see – bright eyes,
curious and then pure joy when he saw the brightly-wrapped present
and the hamper. I had to wipe my eyes ....
The
next family – no one was home except for an elderly lady who didn’t
speak much English. I had to use sign language to indicate
that I was leaving a present for an 8-year-old boy and a box of
food for the family. All she could say to me was “thank you, thank
you, thank you.”.
That
evening, just before I headed out to have dinner with some
volunteers, I saw the coverage on the news on Channel Ten of
Packing Day.
This is
my second Packing Day and I can say that it was even more fun and
satisfying then the first. I had made friends from the first
Packing Day. It was also great to see how improvements had
streamlined even more the arrangements. I have already placed
my name down for Packing Day 2006 ….
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