Educational

03.18.10
To keep things interesting, everyday we were assigned a different post at Whistler Creekside. During the course of my time as a volunteer I worked at the Alpine skiing venue for the athletes and families, local school kids and media. On this particular day, fleets of buses carrying 997 children from local schools between the ages of five and 13 arrived within a two-hour time frame. The kids would run off the buses -- a majority of them would be decked out in various symbols of Canadian pride including face tattoos, face paint, flags, jerseys, funky hats, the famous red mittens and more. The boys and girls would then anxiously migrate to their teacher who would hand them their admission ticket. Each ticket was big, colorful and had a small silver hologram. The kid's reactions were all the same -- cool! Next, they would scurry off to the race course. During their visit they would get to watch the races of the day, have lunch, meet some of the athletes and play with the Paralympic equipment. Two kids at a time could use the sledge hockey equipment to face off with each other. They could also test a sit-ski and learn from a volunteer how the equipment is used by the athletes. When the kids returned to board the buses at the end of their visit some would have autographed tickets by one or more of the athletes that they would brag about with glee. They loved to give us high-fives and ask us to give them pins.