#3

June 28, 2013
Stuffing gift bags for the participants of XXV Nationwide Latvian Song and XV Dance Celebration

There were just a few days left until the Opening Ceremony of XXV Nationwide Latvian Song and XV Dance Celebration and thousands of participants - singers, dancers, brass band players and other artists - were already arriving in Riga. Two hundred volunteers - including me - had had their first official meeting at The Great Guild the day before, but on June 28 it was already a day full of work. Some volunteers were making sure every participant got their ID card, others were coordinating traffic, but I was stuffing gift bags together with fourteen other people.

I had been a participant in such festival myself and knew that there had always been a gift bag for every participant. Therefore this activity - as monotone as it was - seemed more interesting and not so much a drudgery. Our basic task was to put Lattelecom pencils in special pouches - it lacked a challenge, so I took every chance I got to do something at least a little bit more difficult. For a while I was assigned to count the bags. It required patience as I desperately tried to keep my focus and not lose my count. In those three boxes I had to check were 867 bags in total - at least that was the number I got. After that, working with pencils was a pleasant respite. 

In the end though - the work I enjoyed the most was stuffing the gift bags. There were Lattelecom pencils, newspapers about Song and Dance Celebration, papers about ice-cream and two different promotional booklets and in every bag I had to put one of each gifts. I prepared gift bags for collectives from Saldus, Preiļi, Pāvilosta, Cēsis and Tukums. I felt like an elf in Santa's workshop running and working without cease. The room was filled with excitement and sweet chaos and it was actually quite fun.

Of course I took some pictures:

my three boxes with supposedly 867 bags in them

a bag with the beautiful logo on it

thousands of pencils and thousands of pouches

a pencil ready to be put in a gift bag and given away

Klasika - the famous paper that was known to contain a ticket for free ice-cream

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My reflections

I signed up for this activity, hoping to feel the patriotism, the festive atmosphere and somehow partipate in the most important event in Latvian culture. I wanted to help make sure that the Festival was a success and all of the singers and dancers felt most welcomed. Our voluntary work coordinator Jānis Vītols said that we are organizers as well as servants and that everyone's happiness depends on us, so I let others' wellbeing be my motivation.
I met other volunteers - some of whom I had met in the making of "Sidraba Birzs" - and the city representatives that had come to sign in and collect their ID cards and gift bags. There were so many boxes full of bags, papers and pencils that at times I got confused when someone came up and asked specifically for their belongings. Also it was physically difficult to carry these enormous boxes - that I could scarcely hold - up the stairs, but it was nothing comparing to the chaos that ruled in our workshop.
Even if each of us worked by himself we had to carefully allocate our responsibilites, so that we did not, for example, prepare gift bags for the same collective twice. Maybe this was not the most educational activity, but this project and the company I had were both new to me and challenged me to adapt as quickly as possible. The work I did benefited others as much as it did good to me, and I hope the participants will be glad when they receive the gift bags I packed.