Hello Everyone!
Hope you all enjoyed your weekend. I had a pretty ALC event-packed weekend, and I’m just getting to sit down now to write about it! Here’s a recap of my weekend:
Saturday
The day started off with heading to the Miss Asian America (MAA) press conference at Ana Mandara restaurant in Ghirardelli Square in SF. The MAA press conference was pretty fun. Had the chance to chat with the founder Rose more, and continue to build a relationship with her. It’s pretty amazing what she’s been able to build with this pageant and all the work she’s done in building the San Francisco Asian American community. I had a ball meeting the contestants and the escorts. Notable escorts were Jeff and Steven who took the time to chat with me, so big shout out to them! I also had the opportunity to meet and greet with reporters and other notables in the Asian community, so I was pretty excited about the event. The contestants appeared interested in the cause, and our jade ribbon pins looked very nice on their red dresses. It was very kind of Rose to say that they’ll be wearing the pins at all future events. I made several key media contacts during the press conference, and I'm looking forward to all the press that will be coming out the 99 Ranch Press Conference.
Sunday
Today was another jam packed ALC day. We had two events go on simultaneously: Tim’s Korean education and screening event and Uyen’s Vietnamese Parishoners Festival. I really wish I was able to go to both, but alas, I headed out to the Korean event because there was a lot more logistical work involved with it. Overall, it was a pretty successful event in the sense that the parishoners really learned about the importance of hepatitis B and liver cancer in their community. In fact, after the education piece, people were getting their friends in the church who were unable to attend the education seminar to get tested. It was really neat to see people educate their friends about hepatitis B and why it was important that they all get screened. Education is so key to altering behaviour change. One thing that Tim and I need to do is hammer out logistics to help the education / research piece run more smoothly, and we had a good brainstorming session later in the afternoon. Hopefully the next screening (which will be much bigger) will run more smoothly on the registration end. The issue with working in an education AND screening event into a regular church Sunday is that people have other commitments (e.g. choir practice, etc) that prevent them from attending the seminar (which is really the point for us going out there) or the screening (which is secondary). We have only a finite period of time and we have to move things efficiently and quickly in light of lots of forms. N will be doing a similar venture with the Filipino community, and one suggesiton I had for her was considering the possibility of dividing the education and screening into two weekends so as to cut time down and give people the option of scheduling a specific time for their blood draw. But we will need to think about this more and consider it’s cost-effectiveness, too. In the past, when we did ethnic community education / screening events, we did them on Saturdays and the events were open to the public, so we didn’t have busy parishioners needing to stick to their regularly scheduled events – we WERE the event. But you learn something new each time, and it’s nice to be able to work with one church community at a time because they all get involved and that way, the message is promoted via friends, which inherently goes a lot farther than having someone like me stand on a soapbox.
Another highlight today was going to the Milpitas Ranch 99 (yes, again) and seeing our posters up! I wasn’t expecting to see the posters hanging in the store, so it was definitely a delightful surprise!
Customer reading Know HBV and big in-store poster
I think one of my suggestions to 99 Ranch will be to ask if the cashiers can actively promote the bag (E.g. “Would you like to donate $2 to fight liver cancer and get a reusable bag?”) or at least put up an example so people can see useful the bag will be. But overall, I’m so impressed with how GENEROUS Ranch 99 has been. I was also very very excited to see an individual go up and grab a brochure (Know HBV) and read through it while he was walking out of the store (he’s pictured in the photograph I sneaked of him). One more person educated about hepatitis B! Tomorrow will be confirming press to come to the press conference on Friday at Cupertino. I’m also trying to sit down and work on YLC material since we need to get the handbook in NOW. Christine has been working hard and coming into the office on the weekends to get things done for the conference. I’m super excited, but there remains QUITE a bit of work to do.
If you're able to come out the 99 Ranch Market / Jade Ribbon Campaign bag campaign, please do! It's 2:30 PM on Friday, July 24th at the Cupertino 99 Ranch Market.
Yours,
Amy
