A Flavorful Event

Written by: Kate Snyder, Executive Assistant

Well, I am thrilled – no, perhaps an even bigger word, ECSTATIC – to report that East End Cooperative Ministry's first annual A Flavor of the East End was a smashing success. My deepest and most profound thanks to all of you who performed anti-rain dances; they worked brilliantly. It was cloudy but dry which provided a nice relief from the heat and allowed party-goers to lounge happily about the patio, sipping their drinks and nibbling on tasty treats.

We ended up hosting the event in the PPG Aquarium rather than the Water’s Edge exhibit itself due to concerns about whether the latter would be finished in time. Lucky for us, the Aquarium itself is a gorgeous venue and provided wonderful ambience to the evening. Who doesn’t like being greeted by a tank full of friendly sea dragons upon arrival at an event?

If my nose-counting is correct, we had just over 250 attendees at the event and it was a wonderful mix of people – volunteers, staff, board members, loyal donors, friends of friends, representatives from our sponsors, and few others that no one at EECM recognized at all! It was grand.

Music for the evening was provided by the ever-talented Brad Yoder, accompanied by two friends and EECM’s own Children & Youth staffer Terry Levels. The band was positioned on an upper level of the Aquarium, allowing them to send the music wafting out over the event from on high. Down below, guests mingled, ate, chatted, bid furiously on more than 40 silent auction items, and drooled shamelessly over the prizes being raffled off through our Mystery Box Drawings.

This was one of my favorite things about the evening. Mystery Boxes are basically a glorified raffle. We had 200 little glossy multi-colored round boxes artfully arranged on a table (a certain alarmingly clumsy Executive Assistant managed to knock over about 50 of them at one point, but we recovered and I won’t tell if you won’t). Inside each box was a poker chip with a number and inside some lucky boxes there was an additional little prize like a gift certificate to a local restaurant or an IOU for a yummy chocolate basket. You buy your box, check for an immediate prize, then clutch your numbered chip to your heart and hope fervently that it’s the winner of one of three larger prizes – two round-trip plane tickets anywhere on AirTran, a very sexy Trek Lime Lite automatic shifting bicycle, or a three-hour cruise on the Allegheny River complete with food and beverages. Pretty fun, huh?

All in all it was a great evening and perhaps the highest compliment that I heard anyone bestow upon us was to remark “I would never have guessed this was the first time you were doing this event.” Success!!