Volunteers for 2015 OCA National Asian Pacific American Convention

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What's OCA and what's Convention?

OCA is a national Asian Pacific American civil rights nonprofit with over 100 chapters and affiliates across the country and a National Center in Washington, D.C. Every year hundreds of OCA members, APA advocates, national corporate partners (e.g. UPS, AT&T, Comcast, State Farm, AllState, etc.) and public officials come together for the National Convention to share information on the issues affecting our communities and how through spaces like OCA we can make a difference. All our workshops are free and open to the public, what they pay for is the ticketed meal events where our keynote speeches and main award appreciations happen. There workshops tracks are free, and folks need to register at the OCA Website ( www.ocanational.org) ahead of time so organizers know what to expect.

• College Track - There will be two days of College Leadership Workshops. You'd get to meet students from other campuses (If you're available on that Thursday and Friday I encourage you to go to that).
• Young Professionals Track - For those who might be graduating there are workshops to help guide/motivate young professionals including one on entrepreneurship/starting your own business and educators (getting more API teachers to want to take leadership roles at their schools)

Hours There will be stuff to do basically 8am to 8pm on Thursday, Friday and 8am to 5pm on Saturday. In an ideal world we hope we could find folks that can help out all day, but we'll take as much as help as people can offer but those who might be able to commit more time might affect the assignments they get. Breaks We try out best to make sure volunteers get a chance to attend some workshops of interest, take breaks, and get a chance to experience different aspects of the Convention , (e.g. the Welcome Reception on Thursday Night). The full schedule of events, workshop topics and Convention track descriptions can be found at www.ocanational.org Parking/Reimbursements Volunteers will get fed. There will be limited parking reimbursements per day which depends on how much time folks volunteer. To get reimbursed the Volunteer Committee Chair needs to approve their hours. Types of tasks There are so many tasks associated with making the Convention a success and all of them are important! Some of the tasks include:

• Stuffing Convention bags,
• Running errands off-site (Drivers will reimbursed for gas)
• Transporting VIPs to and from the Airport (Drivers will get reimbursed for gas)
• Literal heavy-lifting
• Staffing the Convention Registration and Hospitality areas
• Including answer questions about San Francisco.
• Setting up/cleaning up the Friday Night Event at Francisco Middle School Event
• Serving food or staffing arts and craft tables at the Friday Night event
• Selling Raffle Tickets (proceeds going to OCA and Francisco Middle School).
• Assembling Saturday Gala Decoration (everyone attending the Gala needs to purchase a ticket).
• There's a Senior Day on Saturday where nearly 100 people from On-Lok and Self-Help will be participating in different activites (bilingual Chinese volunteers would be really useful for that).
• Crowd Control

Among other things...

Those of you who have organized large events know there's last minute stuff that always comes up, which is why it's important we have a strong bench of dependable people. Volunteers will need to be at least 18 years old. Appreciation Since some schools or employers favor community service, OCA will provide a Certificate of Appreciation for your service. We will also have a Volunteer Appreciation lunch event at a later date. How to Sign-up Assignments will be handed out based on peoples' availability, experience and interests. Please have prospective volunteers complete this interest form as soon as possible.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rShBuxztWgBQNFMbYMFIx0bkwjzcU269N5SuuSRBlBQ/viewform

As people sign-up, the Volunteer Committee will follow-up with them about their potential assignments. There will also be a volunteer orientation meeting on Wednesday July 1st 6pm at the Hotel to go over the final schedule and make final assignments. Please spread the word if you have any friends interested.

For more information you can email the Volunteer Committee at ocaconvol2015@gmail.com

There will be orientation meetings before the convention dates to get an overview on task assignments, logistics, and any pre-convention tasks that need to be completed.

Other details about OCA and the Convention can be found at the OCA National website: www.ocanational.org