Danielle, Andrea Bornholdt and Keli.

The Rat Assistance & Teaching Society extends a heartfelt thanks to all of the volunteers who offer their time to educate people about rats as pets. Above you can see a randomly selected image from one of the events (refresh the page to see more); below you can read about some of these events to get some great ideas for events of your own.

February 6-8, 2004 - Glendale, AZ - Glendale's Chocolate Affair: What a success! This festival, "A Celebration of Romance", ran from Friday night through Sunday. The person in charge of Glendale Glitters was so impressed with the draw we had at our table there that she managed to get us into the Chocolate Affair, even though the deadline had passed. They provided us with 4 tables and a tent. We had makings for Valentine's cards, plus other craft items-- we sold rat puppets or stuffed rat purses for $5 each, scrunchies with little stuffed rats on them or a  pair of poseable rats for $3. I had several samples for display, including a bride puppet, a pair of bride and groom poeseables, a groom purse, and a Cupid poseable rat. It was neat to see the kids-- and adults-- try to copy my designs. It was really neat to see all the other creative ones, too-- the prom queen purse, the ballerina purse, one with a "tatoo" (someone had stenciled a heart with marker), plus the pair of Goth poseables and even a football player! We ran out of the few puppets early on, by early Sunday we were out of the poseables then the purses, and we only ended up with a few scrunchies. (I think the poseables were so popular because they were a little cheaper, plus they could be split up for 2 kids to work on.) I thought we were done being swamped by then, but the kids kept coming to make the cards. The bucket of foam heart stickers we had we very popular for all the crafts.

December 19-20, 2003 - Glendale, AZ - Glendale Glitters: This holiday festival was a great deal, and a great success! The table only cost non-profits 10% of the profits for the night. We realized after the first night that we should charge more for the make-n-takes, but we still didn't go high enough. Oh, well-- we learned to gear our prices to the events. We had the same crafts as previously (decorate-a-rat and decorate a card). As soon as the kids saw us, they pulled their parents over to our table.  We actually ran out of the ceramic pieces early on the second night. (We had upped the ceramics to $3 each on Saturday.)

December 6, 2003 - Phoenix, AZ - Make-N-Take at a holiday bazaar at a local community center: Some of us RFC members met for the first time here, and we all had a blast, even though this event was not as successful as we had hoped. We were told there were lots of people the year before, but..... The only reason we were able to send any money to RATS was because all the people helping bought stuff! We had "stocking-stuffers" for sale, including soap with plastic rats embedded in them, rat rubber stamps, and rat cross-stitch kits. A few kids took us up on face painting, where we had a few simple holiday designs (we practiced on ourselves first!). For the kids craft projects, we had makings for Christmas cards, including cardstock, stamped designs that the kids could color, markers, stencils, etc. We also had decorate-a-rat: ceramic rats that the kids could paint and decorate with bows, strings, mini-Christmas lights, glitter, pom-poms, ribbon flowers,etc. We charged $1 for either face painting or a card, and $2 apiece for the ceramics.

 
To see some more ideas or to find out how to become an 'Ambassador-at-Large,' click here.