2008 Food Allergy Walk Committee Minutes
March 12, 2008

Minutes submitted by Stacie.

Well our first meeting was a great success. We had 6 committee members in attendance. We had a very productive meeting. We reviewed our plans and goals for the 2008 Walk for Food allergies. Sally pointed out that our date and location has been secured through Omaha Parks and the Walk will be held on September 20, 2008 at the Heartland of America Park at 10:00am. We have the park rented out from 8:30-1:30 for set up, activities before and after our walk, and clean up.

Next, the committee reviewed a few small changes about our walk this year compared to last year’s walk. For example, our starting point will be different due to avoiding unnecessary charges. The committee is exploring receiving sponsorship dollars to fund our starting point from last year. However, if this is not received it will not impact our walk. Also, we discussed the length of our walk and the committee agreed that finding out the exact distance of the trail was needed. Sally was going to contact Omaha Parks, and if they didn’t know, Linda agreed to measure it with a wristband while taking a walk about the trail. FAAN asks that walks following their guidelines be somewhere between 1.5 and 3 miles.

Then, the committee reviewed the tasks that FAAN suggests to implement a successful walk. The following sub-committees were discussed. Sponsorship committee; which entails securing sponsors at all levels; Logistics committee; which solicits donations for the event, and securing volunteers; Publicity committee; which helps develop human interest stories to radio, t.v., print and on-line ads; and Recruitment Committee, which helps to recruit members, teams and plans the kick-off Event. Thank you to Linda and Kim for volunteering to chair the Sponsorship and Logistics committee respectively. Also, thank you to Regina for volunteering to contact Nikki Boulay to help us with PSA announcements on the radio, beginning with Food Allergy Awareness week May 11-17th. Sally agreed to follow up with the Publicity committee, until someone volunteers to chair that committee and Stacie S. agreed to follow up with Recruitment until other volunteers become involved. All committees will need assistance with their tasks for the Walk to be successful, so we are hoping other committee members get involved with specific areas of interest to them.

A great discussion was generated about sponsorship dollars as well as whether our walk should be independent from FAAN or not. These areas are being looked into further to discuss more at our next meeting.

Lastly, we had a discussion about an Honorary Chair person who is someone recognizable in the community. Stacie B. suggested an identifiable, kid-friendly figure might be a good option for this walk as we are working toward making this a fun family event, suggestions included, local sport figures, broadcasters, newsperson etc… The committee did not yet reach a decision, and we are still open to ideas.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday April 9th, at 7pm. Contact committee@omahafoodallergysupportgroup.org if you want to attend this meeting.