Operation Red Nose – And the stupid grin in my face

Posted on by Myke

I’ll write more about the system I’ve been developing for Operation Red Nose (Ottawa) some other day; for now, I’m too busy feeling good about these two notes 🙂

To all our volunteers, Thank you for making our first night of 2013 a huge success! The turnout of volunteers was about double our first weekend last year! I'm so happy to see your enthusiastic support of this great cause. I am so happy to see so many of you back for a second or third year with us. We also had an excellent group of new faces to help out, which shows how much we are growing. A special thanks to the dedicated committee members who beat the odds to have us ready in time. You're all taking on more responsibility and new roles and it is great to see. I am so proud to work with all of you and more importantly to call you my friends. A specific shout out to Myke from Server North who built a new info system from scratch this year. Your ingenuity and efforts caused us to take another huge step forward in efficiency. I know you put in hundreds of hours over the last few months and we are all grateful. When this system is fully operational I know we will be the most hi-tech ORN ever! I am looking forward to working with all of you to make our third year the best yet! Sincerely, Dave van Vlaanderen Executive Director Operation Red Nose Ottawa
Note from Dave van Vlaanderen, the Executive Director Operation Red Nose Ottawa
I wanted to to take a moment to share my experience with Operation Red Nose Ottawa / Opération Nez Rouge Ottawa. I had, like many people, heard about a bunch of people who come around during the holidays to bring you and your car home safely after a night of partying. I had seen the cars decorated as reindeer, and heard the ads on the radio encouraging drivers to be responsible about their holiday party plans. What I never thought of was the behind the scenes work needed to pull off a campaign of this magnitude. After my friend Myke G asked me to help him with a dispatching program he was creating for ORN, I was curious to see how the end result would work, so I volunteered to help dispatch for a few nights. What I saw last night was the culmination of MONTHS of hard work by a group of highly dedicated people, who all obviously worked so hard, VOLUNTARILY, with one common goal in mind: to help make the streets of Ottawa safer during the holiday season. All the while helping a great cause, as proceeds from this donation-driven campaign support the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa. The dedication and class exhibited by every single person involved in this project, from the project managers, to community outreach folks, call takers, drivers, escorts and navigators, IT and telephony folks, trainers, was and is inspiring and heart warming. I wanted to take a moment to thank Every. Single. One. of you who help to make ORN a reality. Pat yourselves on the back, you truly deserve it. Josée
Note from Josée

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