June 8, 2010

by Brande Jackson

Cincinnati Water=Hope vol crew 

Photo: The Cincinnati Volunteer Crew!

Toledo proved to be a small but mighty show; though at one of the smaller venues on the tour, fans came out in force to support Water = Hope! We signed up hundreds of new supporters while also collecting donations for our very popular Water = Hope tee-shirts (you can soon buy them online as well - watch for updates!). We also got nice mentions in the local press, the Toledo Blade, and we were even featured on a local country radio station as well. 

After the show friday night, we headed out on the tour buses bound for Indianapolis, our Saturday show. Cloudy skies hung around all day in Indy, threatening to open up, but we set up our booth and moved forward with fingers crossed. We were joined by a great volunteer crew; Lea, Justin, Matt, Kayla and Chelsea all work together and came to the show together. It was one of their first volunteer experiences, and they did great, signing up lots of people AND getting a chance to meet and talk to Josh Thompson, one of the artists performing on the tour. 

Cincinnati turned out to be the best night we’ve had on the tour yet. Our amazing volunteer crew helped us sign up close to 800 new supporters for Water = Hope! Aaron, Andrea and Kaitlyn are all high school students, Michael and Ashlynn are college students, Karen and her husband David are local Cincinnati residents, and Gayenell brought her entire family to volunteer! The team did an incredible job, even engaging in some friendly competition (for a prized Water = Hope hoodie!)  to see who could sign up the most supporters; we were very amused of their ‘tracking method’ which involved marking off completed sheets on their arms! Ashlynn proved to be the final winner of the night, signing up an amazing 160 new Water = Hope supporters, though Michael was a close second with 135. All of our volunteers worked incredibly hard to make our evening in Cincinnati a huge success. 

Talking to the fans each night is always inspiring; the Paisley and country music community is eager to lend their voice and to invest in clean water initiatives. One of our favorite groups of people were the ladies of the “Waters of Dillsboro Retirment Home”; they all work together at the retirement community outside of Cincinnati and were super excited about the Water = Hope campaign, insisting several times that we promise to email them about volunteer opportunities they can do as a group! 

This week we’ll be in Detroit and Pittsburgh and are looking forward to talking to fans there. We already have some great volunteers signed up for those shows that we can’t wait to meet, but we do still have room for more volunteers to join us, visit our volunteer page to learn more: http://www.waterequalshope.com/volunteer/