PARADE OF LIGHTS

LAST DAY TO SIGN UP FOR THIS IS OCTOBER 31!

Seating sections should be set up no later than 3:30p or 4:00p.  The parade starts at 6:00pm.  Seats are tore down and stacked up on the curbs where they were after people have left the seating area.  Your sections will be on Houston St, H800s and H900s.

It is stressed that NO SECTION IS TO BE LEFT UNATTENDED! After sections are set up it is very important that there is a person or so around to seat any people who come early with tickets, and to also keep people from sitting in the seats when they do not have tickets.  It is hard to remove people when no one is there to tell them they can't sit there.  Also, the parade director will come around and check for all sections to be set up as soon as possible and that they have an attendant present.

Keeping 2 ft aisles between sections are important also for safety reasons, as well as 1 ft space between the last row and the street curb to handle walkers and strollers.  There will be Parade Street Captains in orange jackets (my staff) who will be available for any questions/concerns so please get familiar with them---they are there to help!

Meet: Sunday afternoon at 1:30pm on the 2nd floor of the Hilton Hotel, downtown Fort Worth.

The GM Financial Parade of Lights volunteer opportunity is November 24^th from 1:30pm-8:00pm.  The actual event is from 6:00pm-8:00pm. You must be at the Hilton in downtown at 1:30 sharp if you sign up. Do not be late to this event. The parade features over 100 illuminated entries (floats and more.) If you sign up you absolutely must show. Do not sign up if you aren’t sure if you can go.

• We will be seat ushers. We will be given a certain part of a street where we will set up approximately 50 chairs. As a seating associate, we will manage a single section. We will be responsible for setting up before the parade and restacking chairs when the parade is over. If your area contains bleachers, you will label the bleachers. This position requires a lot of lifting and bending. You will be collecting tickets from the patrons assigned to your section. A chair will be provided in this section for us to watch parade and the section. We will have stickers to stick on the chairs to know where peoples ticket seat number is. Once the parade seating begins we will check people’s tickets to be sure they bought a seat in our section. We will have a folder with important information in case people ask us questions about the parade route. We will also have assigned Parade of Lights people that will check in on us to be sure we are ok from time to time.

• We cannot stress enough that you should ONLY sign up if you are 100% sure you can go. Our sections are by ourselves, not in groups, so if you do not show up, no one will be there to cover your section. This is not acceptable, and if this happens you will not be allowed to participate in another Interact Club volunteer event. This happened last year and we had to run between two blocks to keep up with hundreds of tickets and that will not be happening again. We are being paid for this so we need to represent South Collegiate well and look professional by showing up to the events we sign up for.

• They do not feed us at this event, so bring a snack and dress warm. It was freezing last year, so dress appropriately. The notes I found online show that we have to have our Parade of Lights shirts showing at all times, so they expect us to wear them over our jackets.

• The Interact Club will be paid for this, so this is kind of like a fundraiser for us. If you want to make shirts, this is where our money comes from to do things like that.

• Please Note: Be aware that people who do not purchase seats will bring their own chairs and try to squish into your section. You must not let them sit in your section, but they are allowed to set up on the sidewalks since it is public property. People last year were very insistent on sitting right by our sections since it is a good viewing area so you need to be assertive with your section. There will be walkways they cannot block as well due to fire hazards.