I worked with some pretty incredible people this week and was able to learn a lot from them. One big thing that stood out for me was the idea of contributing to something greater than yourself; knowing that the better job you do, the more good you are creating – pretty cool stuff.
I was able to attend a sponsorship presentation with a boardroom full of area managers at the head office of Swiss Chalet on Thursday. They will be the presenting sponsor next spring for The Ride To Conquer Cancer. It was an interesting experience and very similar to what I was told to expect when in business school – you walk into a room full of executives with your power point presentation and you have 15 minutes to sell them on your idea. When I was introduced a couple people in the room said out loud, “oh yeah, you’re that One Week Job guy” which helped make me feel more comfortable.
The Foundation had a large mural painted on a wall near the hospital of a couple cyclists promoting The Ride To Conquer Cancer event. It was painted through Toronto’s graffiti transformation program which uses the artistic talent of local youth to help clean up graffiti covered city wall space. About the program – ” Since 1996, 430 murals have been created in the city and over 1,200 youth have received paid work as well as training in the technical aspects of graffiti removal, outdoor art, and business skills.”
On Friday afternoon, all of the kids who were involved in painting the mural were invited back for a photo shoot in front of the mural and then a pizza lunch at Princess Margaret afterwards to say thank you for their involvement. It was a lot of fun and I was able to spend time speaking to the kids about my experiences with One Week Job, tell them stories and what I have learned a long the way. They were very interested, asking lots of questions, and I really enjoyed sharing the experience. I think it serves as a positive experience for the kids and is something that I would like to spend some time doing after 52 weeks are finished.
Here is a video outlining the making of the mural:
We are now in Kitchener/Waterloo after having spent the last three weeks in Toronto. It seems as though there is always some sort of festival going on in Toronto, so we definitely were never bored. We had a great time over the past few weeks, and met some really awesome people. For example, you may remember that it was first week in Toronto that I was working with Steam Whistle Brewery, though it was just this morning that we finally packed up all of our stuff and moved out of the co-founders house. Thanks so much Greg and Sybil!
Tomorrow is another Monday and so time to start another job; this week I am actually working two which I will explain more about later.
-Sean