Dickens Day

by Dustin Allen
Concordia Lions Club- Dickens Day
At exactly 3 p.m. on the sixth of February, a twenty-four hour read-a-thon of the works of Charles Dickens began; a tribute to celebrate the life and works of the master of prose to ring in what would have been his two-hundredth birthday. This event was streamed live using U-Stream on www.dickensday.ca and, using social media, caught the attention of hundreds of viewers, including Canadian literary giant Margaret Atwood, who re-tweeted the link to the stream to her 300,000 twitter followers. This specific re-tweet was pitched and planned by Concordia Lions Club President Jacob Bos as the club recruited students, faculty, and administrative employees to join the cause and devote fifteen minutes of their day to read a passage of a Dickens novel.
The recruitment process was challenging and required an aggressive approach, as the idea was often initially met with skepticism, but with the enthusiasm and vision of "artful dodger" (as described by Edmonton Journal writer Paula Simons) Jacob Bos' over one-hundred people volunteered their time. On February seventh at 4 a.m. close to twenty students still remained and more were on the way, bringing fresh faces, voices, and coffee. At 3 p.m. after twenty-four continuous hours of Dickens including the entire Tale of Two Cities novel, a celebration commenced in the schools library, as hundreds of students, faculty members, and local news reporters gathered and spoke of the events success: giving due credit to the Lions Club for their efforts.
Teaming up with the Make Your Mark foundation, led by the Concordia Alumni Association, an amount of nearly two thousand dollars was raised for Concordia scholarships during the event, and donations are still periodically coming in now, as the site is still active.
Our Lions Club here at Concordia is small, but has already proven to be creative, productive, and effective. Because of the huge student involvement, the money raised, the complete lack of money spent, and the scale of the event, we at the Concordia Lions Club safely consider Dickens Day 2012 a success. Whether it was recording promotional videos starring students, communicating with legends of Canadian literature, or connecting with local journalists (who eventually devoted an entire page spread to our event), social media proved instrumental in every step of our budget-less conquest.
The greatest lesson learned from the Dickens Day experiment is that a few good men, a camera, and the power of social media is all that's needed to defeat apathetic mentalities, get people involved, promote culture, and create community.