During my sophomore year of college, I was blessed to work in the Berry College Chaplain's Office, and on the staff of Mount Berry Church.  As part of both of those teams, I had the opportunity to practice event planning skills on several different occasions that year.  As well as helping other staff members in executing the events they spear-headed, I got to co-coordinate one of the biggest holiday events our office holds, the Christmas concert, Lessons & Carols.  That event was important because I was still fairly new to the team, so I partnered with another staff member from our office who was more experienced in how that event was traditionally put on.  As we planned together, we were able to talk through and make decisions on what traditional aspects to maintain, as well as what changes we wanted to implement to make the event run more smoothly than in the past.  One logistical issue that had traditionally caused difficulty was that the chapel where the concert was held only had two very small, very old bathrooms which were not able to accommodate the large crowd in attendance.  So all guests (except those with particular difficulties such as small children and elderly attendees) were asked to take a short walk down the the sidewalk and to the left, into the college library to take advantage of the larger, newer restrooms there.  The problem was that many guests would be confused about where to go, with some even getting lost trying to locate the correct building if they were unfamiliar with the campus.  So, to ease this process, I designed a simple map (shown below) which we printed and had greeters distribute to guests who required a restroom break before, during, or following the event.

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Throughout the year, I also assisted in planning and staffing weekly Sunday evening church services held in the college chapel.  This gave me practice in a variety of event-related tasks, from setting up a refreshment and hot beverage table, to serving as a greeter, to helping break down and store sound equipment, to running PowerPoint presentations for worship and sermons.

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Additionally, I got to spend a month managing the Mount Berry Church February Giving Project.  Since Mount Berry Church is not a traditional congregation in that it is mainly made up of college students, and receives funding from the college where it holds services to take care of its financial needs, the staff at MBC had started sponsoring a different non-profit organization every month, in order to encourage students to start or continue in a habit of giving in collaboration with the church.  Each member of the staff volunteered for a month to head up the program.  In February, I chose Sweet Water Outreach, and communicated with them prior to and following the month of fundraising to get the money to them.  Since we were unable to coordinate schedules in order to have a representative from their organization come speak at one of our services that month, we shot an informational video in which I talked about why Sweet Water was important to me and what wonderful work they're doing to better the lives of those without access to safe drinking water.  I'm a lot more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, and it was our office manager's first time editing video, so needless to say, it was definitely a little outside our comfort zone, but it was absolutely worth the final result - raising awareness in a group of students about an organization doing the world good, and raising $160 over the course of four weeks to support their work.