A Cast of Thousands – and the Woman in Charge of Them
Anna Maidon
It’s all very well having thousands of people keen to help, but if you haven’t got a structure in place to direct them, all that enthusiasm could go to waste.
That’s where professional organiser or ‘cast coordinator’ Anna Maidon comes in. She has managed the volunteer ‘casts’ of the ceremonies for several sporting events, including Doha 2006 and Athens 2004, with around 10,000 volunteers apiece. “There is no title which captures the enormity of the job I do,” she said from her home in Salt Lake City, in the United States.
“First we identify a process to work with. I liaise with the Games organising committees up to 15 months before the show,” she explained. “Typically you start with the marketing department so that people who volunteer know exactly what they are entering into. Education and out-reach programmes are designed to make it clear what is required of volunteers. Then we need to develop a programme that will motivate the volunteers as we go along, keep people coming back to help.”
Then comes the task of how best to deploy people. Each ceremony has major departments of work – costume-making and design, construction, performance, catering, transport, and so on. Each department needs behind-the-scenes volunteers, not just those who want to perform in the show itself. Anna estimates that each department has up to 100 volunteers working alongside professionals to get the show ready.
“Many of the volunteers will be asked to make quite long-term time commitments as preparation and rehearsals begin a few months before the show,” Anna said.
Most volunteers really rise to the occasion, she finds. “A very small number of people are maybe in it only for themselves and don’t see the higher personal reward. That can be tough to work with,” she said. “But we operate on a small budget and most people appreciate that. They understand what it represents to be involved in the Olympics. When the light goes on, and people realise the enjoyment in volunteering, that’s a very exciting moment.”
Some volunteers come to enjoy it so much that they become ‘career volunteers’. “I’ve met people who go from event to event volunteering,” she said. “I came across people in Doha who had been in Athens and in Salt Lake City before that.”
Another crucial aspect of Anna’s job is to look after the volunteers while they work. “We are really conscious of their well-being. They are the spokespeople of the Games, they interact with the public.” Keeping volunteers happy means having a carefully crafted budget to provide them with decent catering, drinking water and even some kind of memorabilia to take away at the end. Anna and her team may liaise with city authorities to provide cut-price public transport for volunteers or she may end up booking special buses to bring them to the work-site.
And you need to keep track of everyone. Anna creates vast databases of people’s names, addresses and numbers, even body measurements for those wearing costumes in the show. She also helps design communication systems to keep in touch with these people, for example using mass text messaging.
As volunteers are expected to provide their own accommodation, most are recruited locally. This presents its own problems. “We have to be very culturally sensitive when communicating with local volunteers. I do a lot of work to find extremely good translators and to find out the local customs I need to respect such as siesta times or key religious holidays. And in some places, there may not be a custom of giving time, as there is of giving money. So that can entail some education work.”
It’s hardly a job you can commute to, and that alone demands a huge commitment from Anna, who has been producing such events for more than eight years. For each major event, she up-sticks and finds herself a temporary home in the host city. “I lived for 15 months in Doha for the Asian Games, and 12 months in Athens for the 2004 Olympics. It is challenging personally. When you go away for long periods of time, you can lose your own community. It’s tough to miss out on big personal moments back home. But I love going to live abroad, it’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen to do what I’ve done.”
Tags: Ceremonies, volunteers