Thousands of people in the Twin Cities attended the Eighth Annual HandsOn Twin Cities Volunteer Expo at the Mall of America on Saturday, February 16. We continue to hear from Expo attendees about the benefits of this great event – from finding individual volunteer opportunities to generating new group project ideas – and the HOTC staff considers the event to be a great success. If you attended the event, please leave a comment and tell us about your experience!

The Expo had 85 organizations on site sharing their opportunities with Mall of America guests, 13 of which offered “speed volunteering” opportunities for people to see how fun and easy volunteering can be. Hundreds of people stopped for 5-15 minutes to speed volunteer. Volunteers engaged in projects:

• assembling hygiene kits for Amicus
• cutting out bibs for Bundles of Love
• writing words of encouragement and creating paper fortune cookies for the Free Arts program
• making fleece dog toys for the service dogs at Helping Paws.

Congratulations to the “Best Booth” award winner, McKinley Community CSA. The fresh flowers and produce brightened the day!

For those organizations on site, thank you for sharing information on your great programs.  For those who attended to find opportunities, thank you for coming. As a reminder, there are new volunteer opportunities added to our database daily, so come back to our website often to find the right opportunity for you, your family, or your work team.

The Expo would not have been possible without the wonderful support from our sponsors: Thrivent Financial for Lutherans; 3M; KARE 11; Greater Twin Cities United Way Caring Connection; Land O’Lakes; Health Partners; and the Mall of America.

In addition, in-kind support was received from: the Mall of America; Thomson Reuters; Clear Channel; KARE 11; and Amanda Cox.

Thanks to everyone who was involved. Together, we can all Be the Change!