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Volunteer Appreciation MINT Theme


I found an idea for my volunteer appreciation luncheon on Pinterest. When I saw this bag of mints, I knew that I could build an entire program around this theme and that the residents in my retirement community would love it. As you probably already know, Volunteer Appreciation week is April 21 - 27 this year (2013). Here are my thoughts for the celebration:.

The easiest part of the day will be the menu. There are so many different ways that you can incorporate mint into your menu without going overboard. I have a meeting next week with my culinary department to finalize our menu, but I'm sure that whatever you and your department come up will be just as good. I will post what we settle on afterwards and hope that if you use this theme that you too will return to the site and share what you did for the menu and the rest of the afternoon.
For the tables, my plan is to create a over sized mint for the center of each of the tables that will be used for this annual appreciation lunch.  I am thinking about an Andes mint or a red and white hard candy mint utilizing this process that I saw on Pinterest. My husband also thought that these floral arrangements would be good, but I think that I will save them for another occasion.  I will also place an assortment of the mints in a gift bag at each person place setting. 
The most creative part of the day will be the speech that I will give to the residents. Each year I try to do something different so that they know I care and really do appreciate them as volunteers enough to put some work into their appreciation luncheon program. I've written about some of the other ideas on this blog and encourage you to read those articles too.
This year, I wrote a speech that changed the words ending in "ment" to MINT. Words like commitment, fulfillment, acknowledgement and lots more. To see if there were any words that I didn't have on my list that might work into my speech, I went on-line and found this website.. .... morewords.com  Next, I will be creating a pictionary type presentation to show as I speak to the volunteers. An example would be, the word "judgement." It would have a picture of a judge and then a picture of a mint. I have selected 3 different kinds of mints so that they do not see the same ending over and over again. And, I am only doing the pictionary part of this for a handful of the words.... otherwise, I think it would be a bit overwhelming to follow what is being said.
I have shared my volunteer appreciation speech on-line. When you read it you will be able to see all the words that I've changed. You will also note that I put a few key words in the speech that are important in my community. They might not make sense to you and should be edited. The idea here is that I wanted to share is the use of the words and the ideas of thanking retired seniors who choose to volunteer in their community. Take those ideas and build on them with feelings that come from your heart and the value you know they provide to your community. You will have an awesome speech and leave the residents in amazeMINT of what you've put together for them.
Remember, please come back and share your ideas with everyone..... it takes a minute and it feels good to share knowing that you will help another professional and in turn make more seniors happy.
p.s. If you scroll down, under the mints is a slide show of some of the items I will order and put into the gift bag. Click on a picture for more information from Amazon. 
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Comments

  1. John CollinsApril 3, 2013 at 3:17 PM

    this is an excellent idea! thanks for sharing :)

    - John Collins
    collinshealthedu.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Recharging RetireesApril 5, 2013 at 10:38 PM

      Thank you. My event is in a few weeks. Come back and see the pictures I will post.

      Delete
  2. Recharging RetireesApril 20, 2013 at 1:10 PM

    This event was great! (If I do say so myself!!) The picture above is of my centerpieces. The residents thought that they were large boxes of candy and wanted to know who was going to be the lucky person at that table to take it home. I explained to them that they were "St Ande's Mints" and that they were Cream de la Cream (which is not what the candy says). And since we are St Andrews Estates, I felt it was fitting to use. My gifts were based on the bag-o-mints mentioned above but I found that it was not substantial gift. I added a box of thank you cards to each bag and that made it better. I did think that I could put it at each person place, but they would not sit up, so I ended up making gift table and it came out really nice. Please go to my Pinetrest page (Recharging Retirees) to see the other photos.

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