For my first volunteer activity this year I chose to volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk, held in downtown San Diego on May 20th. The aim of the organization is to “[raise] awareness, fund scientific research, and provide resources and aid to those affected by suicide”. I became acquainted with the foundation after losing my older brother to suicide in 2014. The walk is a fundraising effort and operates by inviting teams to raise funds to support the organization as they walk the 17 mile course through the various areas of downtown San Diego during the middle of the night (the walk starts at 7:30pm and the last team made it in around 4am). As I am a better worker bee than fundraiser or cheerleader, I opted to volunteer as “crew” and assisted with the moving parts of the event. My assignment was to the team minding the route marking - a system of directional arrows and signage zip tied to light and signal poles to help the participants find their way. During the event we were to continuously circulate through the course in a van and check the signage per a schematic provided by the organizers; reinstalling or adjusting signage as needed and also adding additional signage where we felt it was warranted. We were also to call any problems in, which we fortunately didn't encounter many of. Our sister van, however, had to reroute part of the course due to a very unfriendly transient. Fortunately, he was the only blip in the event - we heard from the participants that the transients actually were enthusiastically cheering them all on once they heard the purpose of the event.
The route signage was installed early that morning by another crew, however our first task was to run through the back half of the course to verify that the signage was still in place. We found that a fair portion had been pulled down for whatever reason, so myself being the young one in the van ended up being the designated sign installer. Given this was downtown San Diego on a Saturday night this quickly got interesting as there's nowhere to simply pull over. However, we got good at anticipating what was next, readying the sign in the van, having two people run out to install and clip the ends of the zip ties, then dive back into the van (India Street in Little Italy was where this scene was particularly ridiculous). At times we had to grab an armful of supplies and take to the course on foot when it couldn't be driven, then meet up with the van later. On many occasions we were sent to specific areas to fix missing signage or add more, or even go hunting for lost walkers and get them back on track (there was a right turn in Little Italy that despite two signs proved problematic - a bike volunteer was eventually stationed there to direct the walkers). Fortunately one of the members on our team, Sydney, lives in downtown and was an incredible resource for knowing how best to get places or what streets went which way and how to hit them in the correct direction.
Our task got easier through the night as bars and restaurants closed up and the streets quieted down, and we even got to take little breaks at the rest stops here and there. Early in the morning it came time to start pulling signage down, so we retraced many of our steps and removed signs and zip ties, making sure to leave no messes. Eventually we caught up to the last of the walkers and played leapfrog with our sister van behind them as we slowly pulled down signage. Later we were called to come back in, so we returned our van and were able to be on hand at Ruocco Park in Seaport Village to see the last team in.
In signing up for this event I was concerned about the "up all night" aspect as I can't pull all-nighters as well as I did in college, but it ended up being just fine as we were busy and active the whole time. I did take some serious naps the next day, but it was worth it to support such an important cause. In all, there were 200 volunteers staffing various event needs and 900 walkers - all participated in fundraising and this event brought $1.1 million into suicide prevention research and programs for schools and universities.
This walk was the first one held in San Diego, and by all accounts went well so I am hopeful that the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention comes back next year. In my route during the night I saw plenty of other crew assignments that looked interesting so I hope to be able to volunteer again.