Monday, March 3, 2014

One Smooth Operation in a Large Hospital Office

Last week IHS received a call from Lynn Heath at the UVA Department of Anesthesiology, located in the old hospital building within the UVA Health System complex in downtown Charlottesville. She simply called and said, "I have full-day meals ready for pickup." We had no idea that this project was even in the works, but we were truly delighted and immediately arranged for retrieval.

I asked Lynn to share this experience with readers of this e-mail and then for placement on our charity blog site. This is the FIRST time that a large hospital office had planned, collected and produced full-day meal packets ... used their community service hours available for supporting a charity ... and it seemed appropriate to share how it came about ... hoping to stimulate other office participation.

A Note from Lynn T. Heath, Executive Assistant to George F. Rich, Chair
Department of Anesthesiology .... Our department selected IHS for holiday charity.
"On most days, things are pretty quiet in the Department of Anesthesiology administrative offices at the University of Virginia. And then there was February 21, when ten staffers worked together to assemble 72 meal packets, each package containing enough food to last one person for a full day. We also included a handmade greeting card as a personal touch. A fun change of pace for a worthwhile cause, and easy enough for any office to pull off.

The need is great in our community, and this project was our small way to address it. We are grateful for the financial stability our jobs (and benefits) create and our ability to reach out to others less fortunate. As administrative employees of the department, we have little direct contact with patients. We hope that our support of outpatients and their families adds to their healing in some small way.

Our project was inspired by holiday giving.  We traditionally take donations for holiday presents for our bosses, and last year, our administrator suggested we contribute to a charity instead of on his behalf.  One of the staff members nominated IHS because of the caring connection to our patients. It was too late to complete the project before the holiday break, and weather delays and staff travel pushed it into February. BUT ... any day is a great day to do this!

What's needed?  IHS makes it easy with clear and comprehensive instructions and hints for shopping and assembly. One staff member volunteered to check prices and planned our purchases. Another collected donations. A third brought in art supplies. Savvy shopping stretched our dollars to fund almost twice the meal packets we had originally planned.

This was a strictly voluntary effort. No departmental money or supplies were used, and there was no pressure - just an invitation! - to participate. When the time came, a few employees were unable to join in because of work commitments, but ten turned out to be a great number for a working team. We naturally divided into different roles: some people opened cartons, others sorted and packed meal bags, others broke down the empty boxes for recycling. We had artists who gave special attention to each card, and people who felt shy about even signing them, but it all worked out. Since several people who had donated money were not able to be present when we stuffed the bag, we included them by signing cards with their names.

AND we used our community service time. It only took us an hour from start to finish to assemble our meal packets and make cards, and our department administrators were happy to allow us the time. The majority of the time went into shopping and transporting all that food, a task that could be divided among several people.  As University employees, we are given 16 hours to spend in "Community Service" activities, so it's easy for any department to do something similar. It's a project that can work with almost any amount of money or time available, since it's easily scaled to the resources at hand."  

                                                                                       Sincerely ... Lynn

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