10-23-17 Finally set a schedule for my internship, and my first day ( Or I guess second) is on a Monday. I came in at 9 am and my first task was to sort through index cards. Not exactly what I had in mind but I was still willing to help. The large lists of cards are actually contacts that the WPC has maintained for several years. My goal was to sort these cards with people that can help WPC via graphic design, illustration, communications, anything related to media or graphic arts. Simple enough, there was just a lot of cards to go through. Fortunately for me I have experience sorting stuff since I worked at the post office so I was able to sort through the cards in an effective and timely manner and without the feeling of going postal.

Unfortunately for me, after completing the cards we needed people to contact that contacts on those cards and since there weren’t that many people in, I was phoning duty along with another volunteer named Allen. While I was willing to assist in the back of my mind I was thinking “Why me?”. Speaking is a bit hard for me, you don’t get the same leeway like with writing where you can reply several hours after a message with a eloquently crafted response with next to no spelling or grammatical errors. On the bright side all I had to do was read a script, which eventually became a cake-walk since nobody answers the phone. The time was mostly spent reading the part labeled “Answering machine”. In the end I got worked up for nothing.

10-26-17 I arrive at 9 am again and there seems to be a new agenda today. It seems today we will be doing something called canvasing, where we go around a selected location and going door to door to ask local businesses to see if they can sponsor or help us. So basically more tolerable versions of Mormons. After some time we depart with Lisa, 2 others who’s names I can’t remember and I to the selected location, and area near Williamsburg, hipster central. I mentioned before that speaking is a bit hard for me and that nervousness was only going to get worse since I have to look as professional and pleasant as possible or they’ll turn us down for sure.

After taking almost an hour to find a parking spot, we set off to go to local businesses and ask for sponsorship’s. Out of the handful that we visited the most notable ones I remember were the A/D/O building, a space and restaurant where people can be creative design wise (also full of hipsters). A metal scraping place with a very outspoken owner named Allen who donated a few boxes of dog tags, the Williamsburg hotel while not able to sponsor, was able to offer free rooms for volunteers coming from another country , and an Irish bar with well informed bartender and passionate. Never would I have ever thought I’d meet such interesting characters out in the streets. I honestly expected the worst, Thought they would just shut the door in our face, or forcibly escort us but no, they were genuinely interested or at least polite about not being able to help us. I was even able to collect a few business cards for inspiration. All in all, a pretty good day.

10-27-17- With a list of contacts successfully acquired we now began calling and emailing (mostly calling) specific businesses that seemed interested in helping and sponsoring WPC. A few phone calls are done and we continued searching through index cards to find people related in media to invite to the film event coming up.

10-28-17- Don’t remember much what I did this morning but the most interesting thing about the day was that I was on food pick up duty. Another volunteer with a car, another volunteer and I got into a car drove a short distance to a restaurant and entered through the back. They seem to know the routine and let us through no problem as we pack several Tupperware containers worth of food containing chicken, their delicious mashed potatoes, rice, soups, bagels, and more chicken as quickly as possible. I felt like we were stealing their food and planning a swift get-a-way.