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By Samantha Berke
Each week, every committee looks forward to meeting together — thankfully now in person. We laugh, smile, talk, sing and sometimes even dance. Every Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on the committee, is the best time of the week!
Not every committee meets at the same time weekly, but each committee discusses similar topics regarding events and information committee members need to know. Every meeting always starts with a round robin question. This gives us the chance to get to know one another, while also allowing for a more relaxed start of the meeting before going into announcements and committee-specific tasks on the agenda for that day.
But meetings aren’t just a place to share information. Meetings can consist of fundraising pushes, games and sometimes even cause-connection activities. One memorable moment from a committee meeting last semester, when our meetings were still on Zoom, was when we did what is called a “Donation Train.” For more context, the challenge consisted of a task being given, and members would race to complete the task as quickly as possible. After the winner is decided, the person who presented the challenge must make a donation to the winner’s page, and will also be in charge of sharing the new task. The task at hand was to do a TikTok dance, and I immediately got up and did one, and then received a donation! It was such a fun and funny moment during one of our meetings.
After we go over the important stuff, and sometimes do fun things, we finish off our Public Relations committee meetings with some shoutouts, a Riley fact of the week, and then quotes of the week. All of these little moments are such a morale boost. It’s always nice to receive a shoutout, learn something new about Riley, or feel inspired from a quote. We then read a Riley Story, which tells the tale about different Riley Hospital patients from over the years. They are always bittersweet, and truly meaningful to listen to. Someone in the committee shares their, “Why I Dance,” and tells the group about their personal reasons why they participate in IUDM. Lastly, we finish the night with our Inspiration, which can be videos, songs, or short stories. We then say our goodbyes, then get excited to do it all over again the next week!