All is on track

Yesterday, March 30th, the end of the IOC, after reviewing the facilities and organisation, said the following: 

London Ready to Host 'Outstanding Event,'

Remember Athens and the near fiasco, seem like we will avoid it! yi haaa,

If the organisation of the actual volunteer training is anything to go by, i really believe the IOC is right: it is ever so smooth and flexible (well 90% of it :-))

Last Saturday, i went to Module 3 which focused on Village training, ie get to understand how the Olympic village functions ( I would like to remind you that is where yours truly is going to be based this summer for 5 weeks....OMG) what it does and doesn't deliver and mostly to emphasize that is really a "home away from home" for athletes. there is no press or public allowed in the 3 villages so athletes can really relax and have everything mostly within walking distance. The Stratford Village in London ( where i ll be) will be converted into flats after the games. They showed us how they have been furnishing and modifying the housing to make this work, fulfilling the needs of the IOC and the athletes in the meantime...quite clever if i may say so myself!!

They also did a team exercise where we had to build the tallest tower out of 20 pieces of spaghetti, a marshmallow, a piece of string and some scotch tape....that was super fun, and my team came in second best, at the astounding height of 68cm...Try it at home, it s fun and makes your brain work.

actually quite a bit has happened so i ll put up another post in the next couple of days....

The in-between period.

So barely 3 weeks ago i had a my last training session an i m ust admit that i have gone into withdrawal....my next session is on March 24th or something and in the meantime i need to feed myslef with other Olympics related trivia.

Thank goodness it was my birthday last week and my friends seem to have caught on to my games madness and i receive an offical London 2012 mug and a a book on the British Olympics amongst other things...i'm thinking i should probably erect a trophy wall or something to pull all these tings together.

I've also been receiving emails from my bosses and in particular the one about driving...i had to go through an online training at work, which i didn t do brilliantly at i must say ( although passed everything, rest assured  am not a crazy driver) and so now they have recommended a whole series of exercises for me to prepare with. The actual real life driving test will happen in April and before that i am defintely going to borrow a couple of friends cars to drive round parkings and get used to shifting gears with the "wrong" hand...nothing to overstress about i 'm sure but i'm keen to get it over with.

In parallel we are receiving through email our training materials from previous courses which is fun as i can revise and go through them again...fell like i m an overenthusiastic teenager sometimes!

Starting to panic about the fact that i really don t know anything about sports, so am going to reread "How to watch the Olympics" and have been forcing myself to read a couple of sports articles a day to keep abreast of who is who and what is happening. LOTS to learn.

that's all for the moment people, will be back soon i m sure.

Hackney - Final thoughts

So earlier this week, we got an email from our HR department about the policy during the Games...

Basically, same old, same old...except for those who are volunteering, we get an extra 2 days off, which is pretty cool...still leaves 4 and half weeks for me to log in but hey, every bit helps and counts. Need to get that sorted this week.

My next training is on March 23rd, somewhere in East London, and we'll be touching of difficult topics like doping and security...it's going to be interesting to see how they draw the line for us. While on the one hand, we are fully part of the LOCOG organisation, on the other hand none of us ( well maybe a few), are experts in this kind of thing...so once again a steep learning curve.

I've just fininshed the book i bought " Watching the Olympics" ( Elke, did you receive yours??) and i think i 'm going to have to reread it from the beginning as weirdly enough my brain has not managed to remember all the trivia, rules, locations, greatest champions, main contenders etc...in each of the 26 disciplines.

o joy. or not.

More on Hackney Second Training

I just love the functionality on blogger that enables you to schedule Post publishing...i can write up a raft of content and stagger it through the week so that you, my dear fans and future me, keep coming back for more!


So last Saturday at hackney, i met another good group of people...you can feel the tension grow and people are starting to voice aloud what everybody thinks : this is the best volunteering thing EVER. Everybody has anecdotes about friends who made light fun of them 18months ago and now are a weeee bit jealous...or people who are now trying desperately to get involved...makes us all feel a litlle smug and actually reinforces the sense of being part of a community.

...which is widly counterbalanced by the fact that we all are nervous about the ton of things we need to learn in the short 6 remaining months...from sign language ( dare me, i'm practicing every day), to the protocols to which sport is happening where...why did they have to chose so many different locations seriously??? ...and then delivering under pressure, always with a smile. Yikes.

In May we'll know what delegation we will assigned to, so everybody is going to start studying frantically, all the athletes profiles and then add in on top their specific requirements....plus get to know the Chef De Mission of their delegation. Apparently personalities are very varied from one to another...

This is NOT a holiday, folks.

But o what an adventure.

Hackney - The Return

This Saturday i attended my second Role-Specific training at Hackney Community College....150 new faces, well maybe 147, thought i recognised a couple from the first session. Same thing: the event was super well produced and they had really taken on board the feedback we had provided from the first round...more branding, round tables instead of rows of chairs, more games, more opportunities to meet people etc. the only negative thing was that it was  freeeezing in the gym where we were.

We first went through a recap of our Orientation training ( what i did in Wembley  last week) before moving on to our stuff.

The more i write this blog the more i realise i need to be careful about what i type : they reiterated the necessity of "discretion" and " confidentiality"...anyway i'll see where this goes. Sort of paranoid now!


So...we went through the first 24 hours of a Chef de Mission and athlete's at the London 2012 Games, from landing at Heathrow or anywhere else to settling into their rooms as well as their Welcome Ceremony.

And this is when it started dawning on me that actually 2500 people looking after 40 to 50000 members of delegations ( athletes and the team officials) is actually not that much...we're pretty much going to be working flat out.

The number of Volunteers allocated to each team is minimum 3 and caps at 20...when you're talking about over 500 athletes in team GB and at least double the number of team officials, you have to swallow and straighten your shoulders.

Because once again this training reinforced  how much they will rely on us for everything, from getting food, to getting them to their appropriate location to rushing around the city because someone has forgotten their competition shoes...yes, that happens apparently as 2 team officials from Team USA explained!!

I feel i might be more stressed than they will be. Not good :-)

One more to go...

so tomorrow i have my
second role specific training...and i.ve just booked my third session for march...watch this space people

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Wembley Arena - More...:-)

At the end of the session, they asked us to do a bit of homework : in our workbook, there ar ehte basics of sign language...so the next time time you meet me, just test me, to see if i can actually say my name...I'll stick to Zab for the moment, not Elizabeth.

 

Another thing they pointed out, is that London hosted the Games in 1948...and now 2012, so there is basically very little chance of it happening it again in our lifetime, as more and more city want to host...So for all those that are still sceptical, think on that. And Act.


These are also the first Games that are coorganising the Paralympics and Olympics, under one umbrella and not as 2 separate entities,which means some of us will be working on both.

"Us" is 70000 volunteers, out of a total workforce of 200 000...talk about a HR challenge....pulling all of us together for just 8 weeks, seems like an incredible task. I just think it s amazing that all these people are coming together for something that will be gone faster than we can blink...how do you ensure the legacy of all that effort and energy...

Through sustainable Games, is what is suggested : From our uniforms to the Olympic stadium, everyhting has been built with that principle in mind, and so normally, i said normally, everything will be recycled...That makes feel a little better, for all that money and energy will live on somehow.

That's all folks for the moment.