Feast Day

Walrus wrote: Bigger issues than a few rowdy teenagers!

Such as

Obviously Walrus can answer what he meant as bigger issues but I can answer what I see as bigger issues! There are 6/7 people I believe organising the whole day and the whole evening, this is a massive undertaking which I understand they work on to a greater or lesser extent all year. Each year it becomes bigger and bigger which is great but it brings with it certain legal requirements regarding peoples safety and increases the workload year in, year out.

As all local voluntary organisations will tell you, and as you know I am the poppy appeal organiser, we struggle to get the number of volunteers we need to stage events or fulfill the basics of what we are trying to provide.

I asked on here for volunteers, asking people to give up an hour of their time, or a morning or afternoon and other than Marie from Fired Earth (who was awesome and raised nearly £200, thank-you, thank-you and please go and buy presents from her wonderful shop for your friends and family at Christmas)I got ZERO response, same as last year appeal for help.

The big issue is that this is a community event it should be staged by a community but it is being left to the same people over and over again, we are lucky they haven't just said, you know what we ask and ask for volunteers and nobody helps us, sod it we'll just give up!! I help out with bits and bobs here and there, miniscule amounts, some of them in turn help me with the Poppy Appeal, but hang on, that's the same volunteers doing both things. People only have the ability to handle so much work and I can bet they are actually doing more hours staging this event some weeks than they would do in a paid for job, and I know most if not all of them work a 'real' job as well.

I know that last year the amount of rubbish left on the common was awful and the people who did volunteer were there hours and hours. They have wonderful volunteers (as do I!) but it's just not enough people. It's not just rubbish, it's the time liaising with the council, police, local organisations for stands, recruiting, contacting and allocating volunteers, co-ordinators on the day, traffic management staff, marketing, stage managing, dog shows, car shows, toilets, local schools, security, programs, rubbish, need I go on? 7 people on the committee???

I think I've gone on a bit so I'll stop there. I think if we want these generous hearted, community spirited angels to carry on with organising this event then more people need to stand up and roll their sleeves up!! Or offer their companies to support the event, anyone with a cleaning company? Anyone run a security firm, event management company?