NCL Holiday Tea Goes Virtual, Not Viral
Masked and distanced volunteers wait to collect donations, hand out treats for NCL’s virtual holiday tea. Photo credit Lila Olson.
In a year when so many traditions were axed, the Irvine chapter of National Charity League found a way to celebrate the season safely with a virtual tea. National Charity League is a non-profit providing opportunities for community service and leadership for girls in seventh through twelfth grades. Run entirely by the girls, or ticktockers, and their moms, or patronesses, the organization typically celebrates the holidays with a tea organized by freshmen to honor the chapter’s seniors. No one expected to enjoy the event this year.
Patroness Anamara Ritt-Olson, who serves as the Holiday Tea chair for the ninth grade class, knew it could be turned into a unifying and satisfying virtual event. While many dread the awkwardness of a Zoom get together, Olson knows how to bring meaning to a virtual meeting. She is a Zoom master.
“I'm very comfortable on Zoom,” says Ritt-Olson, who is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine at USC. “I've been teaching online for almost a decade and I've been teaching in Zoom for at least seven years. You have to blow up that program one hundred times to be able to handle whatever it shoots at you. And that's a little tricky for people.”
Due to her skill set, Ritt-Olson knew she could guide the ninth graders into organizing a virtual tea that would rival a traditional one. The group came up with a plan for the tea on Sunday, December 6th, just before the regional stay-at-home order went into effect.
“I had multiple conversations with the class of 2021 to make sure that they were comfortable with it,” says Ritt-Olson. “Then I went back and we had our meeting with the class of 2024 and we had a brainstorming session. It was a about 25 minutes where everyone kind of came up with the theme. They came up with different ideas they wanted to do, and I think it was the girls who came up with the car parade.”
The car parade was the chapter’s way of following health guidelines while providing an immersive experience to attendees. Participants drove to a prearranged location to pick up tea treats and drop off donations for Thomas House residents before heading back to their homes for a slide show and games via Zoom. The emphasis was on keeping everyone safe.
“Masks and distance,” says Ritt-Olson of how they ensured girls passing out tea treats to cars or collecting donations were doing so safely. “One of the things I really stressed was sanitizing hands in between everything. They each had training to try to maximize the distance between them and the patronesses and ticktockers. I tried to adhere to a 6 foot rule.”
These boxes were filled with treats and handed to participants before the tea began. Photo credit Melinda Choudray.
Once the mechanics of safely transferring treats and donations was done, the real challenge began: making a virtual event feel meaningful.
“Virtual can be personal,” says Ritt-Olson. “The trick is to make people feel seen and heard. Sometimes when you interact on Zoom, and I see this both professionally and personally, you don't acknowledge that you can see the person or what's going on behind them because you don't want to embarrass them. You have to be careful not to be critical, but I do acknowledge them. One ticktocker’s hat completely coordinated with her room so I let her know that I saw her. That shows her that she's real to me. I often will tell people about what's going on in my house to make them feel that even though it's digital, we are really interacting. I always scroll through the screens so I'm always looking, and I will comment on what I see so they know I can see them and that they’re a part of my experience.”
In addition to connecting with participants on the Zoom, Ritt-Olson imbued the event with meaning by encouraging everyone to donate to the Thomas House. As a chapter of a philanthropic organization, it is in the DNA of NCL patronesses and ticktockers to seek out opportunities to give to others. This year’s holiday tea was no exception.
“Thomas House is a home for families that are experiencing homelessness, and their main objective is to get people their own independent housing,” explains Ritt-Olson. “They work diligently to improve the quality of life of people who are struggling with homelessness. They set up apartments for people who don't have anything or they might have just a suitcase. So Thomas House puts dishes in the cabinets and they put in furniture to make it feel like a home.”
Ritt-Olson was blown away by the donations NCL collected during the pre-tea car parade.
“It filled a garage,” says Ritt-Olson. “People sent entire dish sets. There was a TV. There were tons of really beautiful new toys. There was an entire bag of pajamas. There were dresses. There's a whole entire cook set. There was a little portable cook stove. People went all out. The generosity is insane.”
Participants drop off donations donations for Thomas House. Photo credit Melinda Choudray.
The tea was not just philanthropic, but personal. Creativity was employed to exhibit the individual personalities of the seniors. Ninth graders crafted a unique tea blend for each of the seniors. The freshmen shared their custom creations with everyone by adding samples of the tea blends individually wrapped and labeled in the tea treat boxes.
“That was so fun to do,” says Ritt-Olson. “The ticktockers interviewed each senior girl one on one. They wrote down all their notes about the girls and made their notes into an Excel file that we shared. Then the girls got on Zoom at like eight o'clock at night on a Thursday, and I told them all the teas I had ordered like white tea, green tea, black tea, rooibos. And then all the things I can mix in. And then they came up with ideas like, ‘Oh, her favorite thing is chocolate. Do you have chocolate?’ And I'm like, I can get chocolate. And we just went through and made them. It was really cute.”
The seniors received additional attention as the tea officially began on Zoom with a slideshow highlighting each girl’s personality, favorite flowers, and future plans. And then the tea turned competitive. Ritt-Olson sent the participants into smaller Zoom breakout rooms for a Kahoot challenge to remember details about the seniors. Prizes were given to the winners in each breakout room. Ritt-Olson recommends games during Zoom get-togethers to keep participants engaged.
A custom tea blended in honor of a senior in NCL’s Irvine chapter. Photo credit Melinda Choudray.
“You just have to try to break the digital divide,” says Ritt-Olson. “There are a lot of games available on online that you can find to do on Zoom. There's different variations of Mafia, which is a really cute game to play on Zoom. You can play Among Us. You can do Jack box games. At work, we experimented with doing Pictionary online. Actually, among adults, we're playing the Never Have I Ever game. We're making a themed cocktail online. We're doing a Zoom gift exchange. We're doing a lot of stuff. A lot of those ideas are online.”
Ultimately, the tea offered a chance for moms and daughters to celebrate one another despite the challenges of a pandemic. Ritt-Olson and the ninth graders managed to pull of a virtual tea that instilled real emotional connection.
“I enjoyed seeing the squares of moms and daughters,” says Ritt-Olson. “There were some really lovely moments. One of the senior ticktockers said that her favorite thing that she did was just spend time with her mom. That got me. I thought, ‘How sweet is that to have those moments.’ And I really did NCL for that: to just share with my kids as much as I can as they become teenagers and have their own rich lives. It’s something we do together and it’s something that we do to make the world a better place.”
The Irvine chapter of National Charity League supports numerous charitable organizations in Irvine and throughout Orange County.