RECOGNIZE   HONOR    CELEBRATE

Last week a bunch of us (and by ‘us’ I mean local volunteers) met for a quick noon hour meeting to touch base and share information about what each of our individual groups were planning for the year ahead.  On a practical level the benefits of this are obvious – we can coordinate our efforts and grow the event status for the town (ie: if the Chamber of Commerce knows when things like ball tournaments are on they can add things like sidewalk sales the same day). It just makes sense to pool our energy in promoting our community as a whole.  There is a side effect to these meetings, though, and that is the feeling of camaraderie when people of diverse interests, but common goals, get together.  It’s not all business; it’s good to visit with our peers as well.

One of the many topics that surfaced in this meeting was volunteer appreciation. 

Volunteers are the life blood of everything we try to do.  They are invaluable to our community, and yet while their work is vitally important, the people themselves end up standing in the shadows of what they have accomplished.  It’s not that they are offering their time and talents for glory or fame, but so many times they don’t even hear their names mentioned when the work is done.

As Fate would have it, a day or two after this meeting an email arrived announcing that Volunteer Appreciation Day was coming up on April 20^th.  This letter also offered a whole range of ideas of how to thank volunteers.  The part that caught my attention was that they used the same three words that I had been thinking about: recognize, honor, and celebrate.  This is exactly how we need to show our appreciation to people whose work benefits us all.

I hesitate to use the word ‘work’ though.  It gives volunteerism a bad reputation.  It makes it hard to recruit new members.  Nobody wants to take on more ‘work’.

I am reminded of when I was a kid and doing the dishes was a job that my sisters and I had to do.  It was drudgery.  It took forever.  We argued constantly about who did what.  It was a fight every night (sorry Mom).  But when the extended family got together for a big meal and there were countless more dishes to do, it was the adult women who cleared up and did the dishes.  They did this much larger job with cheerfulness, conversation and cooperation in half the time.  They did it with laughter and light hearts.

How could such an enormous job be turned into something that sounded like fun? I don’t know how old I was when it finally dawned on me that the difference was a simple matter of attitude.

When a group of volunteers are working on a project together this same kind of magic happens.  I’ve said this before many times: “Many hands make light work!”. 

Being a volunteer is a vitally important contribution to the community in which we live.  It’s how we build our community, but it’s also what makes our community worth building.  It’s where we weave our lives together, where friendships blossom and grow, where we build a collective resilience to both weather setbacks, and build on our successes.

A volunteer’s work is so valuable we could never afford to pay them, but our town wouldn’t exist without them.  That’s how important they are.

So, tell them ‘Thank You’.

I know to a large extent that means this means mutual ‘thank yous’ back and forth as so many of us are the very volunteers we wish to honor, but it’s still important that we recognize each other. 

And for once people, don’t be so humble.  When someone thanks you for the work you do, accept the praise – you have earned it! 

Go ahead – celebrate your good deeds!  You are the true Hometown Heroes.