Board Match Fair at SanFrancisco

With a background as a telecom engineer, I am familiar with technical job fairs in the valley. But I wasn't ready for this evening's Board Matching Fair. It was held by "The Volunteer Center" at the Metreon on Mission and 4th in SFO.

As I walked to the fair, I wondered how the turn out would be, if people would be interested in working as a board member for a non-profit without any pay, benefits, nothing.

There were about a 100 different agencies represented! And so many board seekers like me!! I quickly felt overwhelmed and had to find comfort in the familiar HOBA booth! Energised by meeting the staff and board at HOBA, I decided to venture out to talk to a few organizations.

I met Vanessa there too - she was happy that the event was in SFO, her home turf! She too felt that she didn't expect so much turnout. We browsed through some of the booths together.

Advocacy organizations, health/wellness, women's issues and education were a few key areas represented at the fair. I can see that what draws me to some of the organizations are core-values that are personally meaningful to me. I loved meeting a few executive directors and seeing how I too could perhaps take on a leadership role.

HOBA has given me a base to explore these opportunities, a place where I can stretch out if I want to, not because I have to.

Its 2008 already!

Another year rolls by. Its been quick! We met at Google again for our monthly meeting. Some very good news from Montez - he has secured us about $2000 in funds. That was a lovely introduction to the evening.

Vanessa also had good news. She has teamed up with Prom 2.0, an event in SFO that will host a prom-like event. Its an evening filled with dancing, food and socializing. A certain percentage of their tickets proceeds will go to HOBA. We are excited about this and will have a presence at the event with a table, information about HOBA etc.

Beth and Ambrosia from HOBA gave us a good introduction to Teamworks. The TeamWorks program brings together a group of 8-15 volunteers to participate in direct service, facilitated reflection and issues education over a series of 5-6 events. Often times, they revolve around a existing social problem or theme. Our team wants to initiate one in the Silicon Valley.

The same set of volunteers will come to all the projects in the series. Each project is followed by a postmortem. Clay and Karen from our group have already done the TeamWorks series in the past. Their experience has left the remaining of us wanting to do it too.

Never having felt the lack of ideas, we have come up with a TeamWorks Silicon Valley Sampler. This will include 5 consecutive projects each with different HOBA-affliated agencies. At each event, you will get to meet at least one member of our team.

Ambrosia talked about leaving behind a legacy as part of the first LIFT team. Its hard to imagine that we will graduate out of the program in just over three months.