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Your community needs YOU!

CITY NOTES

Your community needs YOU!

A big salute to all of our various volunteers who were honored last week at the annual Volunteer Appreciation Awards hosted by the Charles City Area Chamber of Commerce and Community Revitalization.

The full list of honorees can be seen at www. charlescitychamber.com or www.ccrevite.com. I also want to give a shout out to everyone who showed up at that event at the Senior Center to show the community’s appreciation for those volunteers. I guarantee you that none of the honorees put forth the volunteer effort that they did expecting any kind of community recognition. That’s what makes them true volunteers.

But at the same time, I think it was obvious that they all appreciated knowing that we, as a community, appreciate what they did (or are still doing).

Volunteers come in all shapes and sizes, ages and backgrounds, from high schoolers working on their Silver Cord hours to retired residents. It doesn’t matter if they volunteer for an hour at one event a year, or volunteer consistently year around – they are making a difference. They are making things better some how, some way, for someone. The more we volunteer, the more of a difference to more people we can make and the more we can get done. When no one else is getting something accomplished, it is volunteers that can make it happen.

Nationally, the dollar value equivalent of a volunteer is $23.56 per hour. That’s how much an hour of volunteer time is worth on average to a group or organization like the Chamber or Community Revitalization.

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, about 62.8 million Americans, or 25.3 percent of the adult population, gave 7.9 billion hours of volunteer service — worth $184 billion — in 2014. And that’s only a quarter of the adult population. Think what we could accomplish locally, state-wide and even globally if everyone volunteered just an hour of two of their time, effort and skills to a community betterment project?

We could do almost anything we put our minds and hearts to.

That’s what Community Revitalization is all about. It’s a volunteer-led organization in which volunteers come up with the ideas, the plans and the effort to make things like the recreational trail, downtown beautification, public art works and physical improvements to our community happen.

It’s volunteers who make Party in the Park, SpookWalk and more possible. And on the Chamber side, the Charles City Challenge: Whitewater Weekend, Charles City BBQ Challenge and annual Fourth of July Celebration don’t happen without volunteers stepping forward to make them possible.

Both the Chamber and Community Revitalization are always in need of volunteers to assist with the many events and activities they put on in Charles City. This is especially true of the four-day Fourth of July Celebration this year on July 1-4 and the Firecracker 5K/5 Mile race the morning of July 4. Volunteers are critical to being able to offer these types of activities, even if you can just give of an hour or two. There are things almost anyone can help with, and volunteering not only benefits the community, but it is a great way to meet new people and make new friends.

Volunteering doesn’t have to be all work, no pay and no play. I am always telling people to find something they enjoy and start volunteering there. Begin with something you are passionate about, because then it doesn’t feel like work. In fact, I know an awful lot of volunteers who have a lot of fun doing what they are doing, and it is because they are doing something they already enjoy and with others who enjoy the same thing.

Once you get comfortable, there you can start branching out into other volunteer opportunities to see what else you might enjoy doing. The best part is you can try something new and if it isn’t for you, there’s no further commitment. A volunteer may work for free, but he or she is also free to pick and choose what they want to do.

With all that Charles City has going on, we need YOU to help keep that going. Please check out the volunteer opportunities at www. charlescitychamber.com or www.ccrevite.com. There are forms right there online to sign up and volunteer if you are so moved.

You can also contact the Community Development Office at 401 North Main St., (641) 228-4234 to learn more about our volunteer opportunities and how to get involved.

Mark Wicks

CC Community Development Director

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