Volunteer Opportunity – Event Coordination Event: Vancouver magazine Restaurant Awards

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 12th 10:30am – 6pm (required) Monday, April 11th 1pm – 4pm (if available)

Elettra Communications is looking for student volunteers to assist with Vancouver’s premier restaurant industry event. This opportunity will appeal to students who have an interest in public relations, publishing, marketing, or event management.

Now in its 22nd year, Vancouver magazine’s Restaurant Awards is the biggest event of its kind in North America. Twenty of the city’s top food critics form the judging panel and vote on the best dining experience in more than 30 categories. The event itself includes a reception and awards show. The annual extravaganza welcomes more than 700 restaurateurs, chefs, sommeliers, suppliers, and food and wine critics.

Elettra Communications is the producer of Vancouver magazine’s Restaurant Awards. Elettra is a public relations firm that specializes in event management, media relations, and marketing consulting. www.elettra.ca

Duties: Volunteers will assist with a range of activities including: • Event set up • Gift bag assembly and distribution • Guest check-in • Awards presenting/backstage coordination • Coat check

Benefit to you: • Event coordination experience. • Exposure to the behind-the-scenes workings of a large event. • Opportunity to build contacts in the PR, marketing, and publishing industries. • Lunch will be provided.

Dress code: All black. No jeans; no running shoes/sneakers.

How to apply: If you would like to volunteer for this opportunity, please contact gwen@elettra.ca. In your email please provide a brief introduction of yourself, and include a description of your current course of study and your contact information.

The search for BC’s Best Young Designer has concluded, and Morgan Crossing is pleased to announce that the winner is Daniel Meloche of Vancouver. The judges selected Meloche from a group of six finalists who competed for the prestigious title and grand prize by designing a suite at South Surrey’s Morgan Crossing village.

“The judges were looking for the designer that really captured their target market, while remaining true to their own design aesthetic,” says Kari Henshaw, Competition Judge and Principal at Insight Design Group.  “It’s a tough balance to achieve, and Daniel accomplished it with thoughtfulness, cleverness and a well executed design.”

Meloche, a graduate from the Art Institute of Vancouver, is currently an interior designer and project coordinator for Northland Properties. In his suite at Morgan Crossing, Meloche favoured a clean and contemporary design aesthetic with striking pops of colour and strong lighting elements. As his prize, Meloche will choose either an all expenses paid trip to New York City to attend the Architectural Digest Home Design Show, or the cash equivalent.

“I am overwhelmed and thankful for the honour of being named BC’s Best Young Designer,” says Meloche. “The competition was not only a great test of skill, but also a test of strategy in orchestrating my design vision on budget and on time. Every competition has its up and downs, but through all the hours of painting, ironing, shopping, and some more painting, there was nothing more rewarding than the final result, and the reaction of people who come through my suite.”

Public voting also determined a winner in the “Fan Favourite” category. Burnaby’s Joanna Kado won the category by designing a suite that featured warm colors, urban influences, and layers of textures. Kado will be awarded a prize of $2,000.

The furnished design suites are open for public viewing every Saturday and Sunday until March 20. BC’s Best Young Designer competition winner Daniel Meloche will be on site each weekend 12 pm - 3pm to offer general design advice to members of the public who tour the suites.

Each of the finalists’ suites are now available for sale. A 773 sq. ft. fully furnished one bedroom + den is priced at only $254,900 and a 828 sq. ft. fully furnished 2 bedroom sells for $313,900.  Until March 20, new purchasers of suites at Morgan Crossing are eligible for a complimentary two-hour design consultation with Daniel Meloche or Joanna Kado.

Morgan Crossing’s BC’s Best Young Designer competition was an opportunity for aspiring interior designers (both professional and non-professional) to apply their creative design skills and showcase their talents. Six competition semi-finalists were given access to a newly built suite at Morgan Crossing village in South Surrey, along with a $10,000-$12,000 budget and a month’s time to decorate and furnish the suite.

We just got our certificate of diversion from Urban Impact Recycling. This document outlines how much waste we diverted from the landfill by implementing our in-office recycling program. Since we moved to our new office last summer, we helped save:

• 3,010 L of water
• 7 trees
• 1,763 kw of electricity

Here's to continued waste reduction in 2011!

Yesterday at YVR, Vancouver Airport Authority launched a $100,000 partnership with Quest Food Exchange to reduce hunger and foster sustainability.

As part of the event, Airport Authority employees pushed fifty shopping carts full of food donations.

Food donations were loaded into the Quest truck. As the Official Transportation Sponsor of Quest, the Airport Authority will donate $100,000 to Quest over the next two years as part of its community investment program.

Vancouver Airport Authority's Larry Berg, presents the Airfield and Emergency Services Blue Team with the President's Award for Safety Excellence trophy.

Read a story about BC's Best Young Designer finalist, Karen Wong, in last week's Richmond Review.

There's a great story in today's Victoria Times Colonist about the importance of early literacy and reading to children in the very earliest stages of life. The story also mentions the amazing Books for BC Babies program which is struggling to survive after losing it's funding from the provincial government. The Books 4 BC Babies program puts literacy tools in the hands of every family with a newborn in British Columbia, and it's an important program to save.

Find out more about how your company can help save the program here.

Morgan Crossing's BC Best Young Designer competition was featured on Shaw TV's The Express. Check it out on Youtube... the segment starts at 5:29 of the clip.

Read The Surrey Now's story on the Morgan Crossing's Best Young Designer Competition.

Read The Peace Arch News story about the BC's Best Young Designer Competition.

BC's Best Young Designer competition in the Vancouver Sun:

What the young have done

Bold is not cold in this Morgan Crossing home decorated and furnished by a young designer, Jennifer Scott of Vancouver. Six Morgan Crossing homes decorated and furnished by the finalists in a young-designer competition, organized by the developer of the new-home community in south Surrey, now are open to the public. One of them is the home shown here. The competition's grand prize is an all-expenses- paid trip to New York City and a pass to the Architectural Digest Home Design Show. The fan favourite prize is $2,000 cash.

The six finalists were chosen by a panel of judges from video entries. (Only B.C. residents 30 years old or younger could enter the competition.)

The judges are: Kari Henshaw, Insight Design Group; Sarah Bancroft, editor-in- chief of Vitamin Daily, and Matthew Budgeon, film and television production designer.

The other five finalists are: Britt McMaster, Vancouver; Joanna Kado, Burnaby; Daniel Meloche, Vancouver; Penelope Sloan, Vancouver, and Karen Wong, Richmond.

The winners of the judges' prize and the public's prize will be announced Feb. 28. Check out bestyoungdesigner.com to learn more.

The six finalist in Morgan Crossing's BC's Best Young Designer competition have finished their entries. I've just come from a sneak preview of the suites where I was blown away by what these up-and-coming designers have accomplished.

The competitors had five weeks and a $10,000-$12,000 budget (depending on the size of the suite) to completely furnish and decorate a suite in the Morgan Crossing Village. A panel of judges will award one overall winner an all expenses paid trip to New York City to attend the Architectural Digest Interior Design Show. A fan favourite (chosen by the public) will win $2,000.

The suites are open to the public for viewing from 12pm-5pm every day except Friday until February 20th. Visit the Morgan Crossing Presentation Centre to vote for your favourite.

Photos from each of the designers are below, and you can learn more about the competition here: http://www.bestyoungdesigner.com/

And to get a sense of what these young designers have accomplished, here is a "before" shot of one of the suites:

(All images are available for media use.)

Jennifer Scott designed suite 451 at Morgan Crossing. Jennifer has a Bachelor of Design from Ryerson University, a minor in Business Communications, and a diploma in Fashion Merchandising. She currently is part owner of A Good Chick to Know Design Consultation where she works with clients on both wardrobe and interior design.