At Bartlett, getting ready for A.S.P. is simply a way of life. We have the great fortune of having over 120 persons apply each year to go with us to Appalachia. We have the great misfortune, however, of only being able to take 70 volunteers with us so the year is filled with fund raising projects and training sessions that become mandatory for all participants.
While we wait to hear from A.S.P. about our location for the next summer, we start thinking about how we will fund our trip and training. One of our fund raisers involves a high quality Craft Fair. Held on the first weekend in November and the fourth weekend in March, we have 110 booths of top quality crafts provided by crafters from all over the mid-south. The proceeds from the booth sales, concessions, and bake sale are split by our Youth Department, Youth Choir, and our A.S.P. Group. Our A.S.P. Volunteers and other members of the youth provide food service to the crafters in their booths, take holiday theme pictures for the children, sweep floors, and just about everything else you can imagine in an event that has over 2000 people in attendance. These craft shows have taken a big part of the money crunch away from us and we no longer have to worry about car washes, yard work, and other low profit money raisers.
As soon as we hear back from our application and have a general idea of what county we will be going to, we hold our "official sign-up" meeting. During this meeting, we will plan on other fund raisers, and determine dates for training and work sessions. We will require each participant to have completed at least two of these training sessions and all of the fund raisers, in order to go with us. During these sessions, we have built handicap ramps for needy folks in our inner city areas of Memphis. We have painted houses, repaired roofs, and just about everything else that we might encounter in Appalachia. When we have needs at the church, we will use some of the days working at home, building shelves, building office spaces, building storage spaces, and sometimes just cleaning up. When it is all over, everyone who steps on the bus to A.S.P. will have used a power saw, used a tape measure, hammered a nail (It may have taken a hundred strokes!!), and experienced the thrill of building and repairing something for someone else.
