Latch On America

July 1 I get an email saying that Milk For Thought is coming to our town. We've been selected as one of 35ish stops on a nationwide documentary tour starting mid-July and ending the first week of August. There was a conference call, a committee formed, and our tasks began. I returned home from a trip in CA and went head first into working for Latch On America: Utah, which would be held on July 22nd, taking the title "Events Coordinator." With the help of others, particularly Karin Hardman, UBC president, who made calls to all of the health care facilities that would be involved, and Melissa Knighton, who helped me contact AGAIN all of our Baby Friendly Businesses plus some, we made 50 or so calls to invite businesses and create an event. We created and mailed out packets with advertisements, invitations, fliers, goals and agreements.On Friday July 22nd something like 17 booths/businesses set up on the North East lawn of Main Library square in downtown SLC, UT with a 40 foot pink bus as our main event.The booths held free drawings, offered screenings, music classes, giveaways, information, games and more. We also had two acoustic musicians and a facepainter on site.For my part, I not only coordinated the events, I also had my hand in making sure three specific booths were set up, La Leche League, Breastfeeding Cafe, and my own photography booth, Landslide Photography.I REALLY wanted to have a photo booth at the event, offering free nursing portraits. In fact, one little detail. . . EVERYTHING had to be free. We couldn't sell a single thing on the lawn that day. I'd offered to the two other photographers who are represented in the Breastfeeding Cafe space, that we could rotate, each offering an hour of photos. One of the ladies already offers a cool product at the Farmer's Market each weekend, but she works in film, and again, we couldn't SELL anything, but she couldn't do it for free. The other didn't like the idea of "photo booth" style. Crazy as it was, I REALLY wanted to do this, I also knew it was a great opportunity to showcase my business. . . it was totally free, I was the event coordinator, WHY NOT?!!!Mike ended up manning my booth half the time. My friend Christy's "milk donation center" booth, ended up being the favorite hangout for all of the kids. Airi was out of her mind tired, not having taken a nap before heading down at 2pm, and not leaving the event until 8pm. But she pushed through and made it without any break downs the whole day. I was running around like crazy, but somehow didn't get to visit ANY booths.At 2pm, we (and that means the three husbands of the ladies who had agreed to man my three booths) put up two sunshades, three tables, a bean bag toss, and a ton of information. The wind kept blowing our papers away and photos (even in poster frames) down or whipping them around. I held a drawing at my booth, for a free "mini-portrait session" and I also offered free MICRO-nursing portrait sessions. I had TEN moms participate in the free sessions, and probably 15 or 20 entered my drawing.It was SUCH a fabulous day. The Latch On America/Milk for Thought crew held interviews all day, there were a few news stations and photographers, and a couple of hundred people probably milled through during the day. It seemed like there were some great giveaways, but I barely got any of them.GREAT event, GREAT day. We coined it as "Bringing together our Baby Friendly Community and highlighting a LIVING resource guide for breastfeeding." It certainly lived up to expectation and served its purpose in the community. The next series of photos will be from those sessions held at Latch On America.