In a community like Sweet Home, things don’t happen unless people step up to make them.
I’ve lived in a variety of towns, large and small, and it’s become pretty obvious to me over the years that Sweet Home is particularly blessed with residents who have a distinctly can-do attitude.
That was particularly evident in December when the Christmas parade took place. It was only one of a number of events during the first weekend of the month, which kicks off the holiday season here, that were powered completely by volunteers.
The parade almost didn’t happen, though. In recent years it’s been organized by the Chamber of Commerce, but the chamber’s recent financial difficulties – and resulting lack of staffing – made it impossible for it to put on the parade. That didn’t sit well with certain local citizens, including former Chamber Executive Director Andrea Culy, former board member Sue Olsen and her daughter Debbie, former employee Chris Pinto and Cassie Richey. As we noted in a Volunteer of the Week shout-out a few weeks ago, they stepped up and formed a committee to put on a parade.
It’s a little hard to confirm this, since records of past parade participation are sketchy – if they exist at all, but the general consensus was that the turnout, both on the street and in the parade itself, was even better than usual for recent years.
That’s what volunteerism is all about and with a new year before us, it’s something we should all be thinking about.
Volunteering is not only responding to a crisis – a disabled resident left homeless by a falling tree, devastating fires that wiped out families’ homes and livelihoods, children who don’t have enough to eat on weekends, a lack of coaches for youth sports teams, etc. Often, volutneering can be a long-term commitment such as serving on a board or being a mentor to a needy kid or tending the flowers in the median along Main Street.
As a relative newcomer to town – less than 10 years – I have to rely on what people tell me or what I read in back issues of the newspaper to understand how things used to be. Sweet Home has definitely changed over the last 25 years, thanks to the wave of environmentalist activity that virtually shut down logging in the Willamette National Forest. People who might once have worked in the wood products industry now work elsewhere – out of town. That’s had an impact.
In any community things tend to go in waves – the Chess Club or High Q programs might be highly successful for a few years, then disappear; Sportsman’s Holiday activities come and go (even the popular ones) – because of the presence of volunteers.
Another good example that I haven’t mentioned and, by way of full disclosure, I have to say I am personally involved in, is the Sweet Home Active Revitalization Effort, funded by the Oregon Jamboree (also volunteer-driven). SHARE has maintained momentum over the past few years and the results are evident in a number of ways – new paint on downtown buildings (including our own), increased focus on attracting money (tourism and new businesses) to our community, and increased emphasis on helping existing businesses be better through education and individual assistance from our community development director, Brian Hoffman.
Economic development is a slow, steady process without a lot of big splashes, so it’s easy to overlook progress that has been made, but progress is being made and volunteers have a lot to do with that.
Having said all this, let me get to my real point: simply that many of our key volunteers, the people who have made a lot of things (including the parades) happen in Sweet Home, are getting older. One of them pointed this out to me recently when she stopped by our office, noting that she didn’t have the energy and strength she’d had only a few years ago. Interestingly, a few days later I got into a conversation with another individual, who, I’d guess, was in his early 30s, about the situation described above.
We were discussing how Sweet Home is evolving and he said something important: “Things are changing because the younger generation is starting to step up.”
That’s important, because it has to happen. The quality of life we enjoy outside of sunshiny winter days and green forests is largely driven by people who help the community – one another – by volunteering for things they believe are important enough to invest their time and energy into. Many of them are retired and some of them don’t have the energy they used to.
Most of us younger folks are working hard, trying to make a living, trying to get the kids to sports practice or music lessons, trying to keep the grass mowed and the roof fixed, trying to keep our heads above water. Some have to commute to work, which doesn’t make life easier.
The bottom line, though, is that commitment is what makes our world go ’round, in many ways. Many of the people who understand that are graying and aren’t what they were five or 10 years ago. It’s time for the younger generation to start thinking like the man who came to our counter.
If you believe activities are vital to a healthy community – festivals and celebrations, youth sports, clubs, beautification and other community-betterment projects, these things don’t just happen. People make them happen.
“What can I contribute to make Sweet Home a better place to live?” That’s a good question to ask ourselves as we enter 2012.