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Twelve communities receive the
2004 Volunteer Community of the Year Award; winners
pick up their honors at the League Winter Conference.
By Dacus Thompson, League Staff
Warren, an invigorated city with a renowned tomato festival,
has a swelling number of volunteers who helped this Bradley
County community be among the 12 Volunteer Communities
of the Year winners. The Arkansas Municipal League, the
Governor's Office and the Volunteer Division of the Department
of Human Services sponsor the Volunteer Community of
the Year award. The award was developed to acknowledge
communities that display an exceptional drive for volunteerism,
such as the Happy Quilters in Tuckerman, the organizers
of the Pink Tomato Festival in Warren and the thousands
of volunteers running thrift stores, fire departments,
youth sports and a multitude of other activities that
help our cities and towns maintain the highest quality
of living anywhere. Volunteers save our communities millions
of dollars each year, from the $175,000 in services donated
by the residents of Warren to the almost $2.4 million
given by volunteers in Maumelle. It's a service that
is essential for the sustainability of public programs
that would otherwise come to a grinding halt. "Sometimes
you couldn't function without assistance from volunteers,"
Attorney General Mike Beebe told the League's Fall Conference
last year. "Sometimes the only way services are delivered
is through volunteers."
Nominators take different routes in their entry offerings.
Communities applied for the highly sought-after status
by composing a brief essay about volunteerism in their
community and gathering supplemental information on volunteers
in their towns and cities. The award nominators in McCrory
gathered seemingly every article on volunteerism in their
local paper, the Woodruff County Monitor, and stapled,
fastened and pasted the articles so they would fit in
the application packet. The result created a veritable
mound of information; folks in Maumelle made concise
scrapbook-like cutouts of events, programs and exhibits
that were made possible through volunteerism; other nominators
simply submitted the essays with no fanfare. An independent
panel of volunteers appointed by the Division of Volunteerism
selected the 12 winning entries. The Arkansas Highway
and Transportation Department installs a 2004 Volunteer
Community of the Year placard at the winning communities'
city limits. The winning communities will accept their
awards Jan. 13 at the League's Winter Conference, Jan.
12-14, in Little Rock.
Here's what sparked the 12 communities to attain a Volunteer
Community of the Year award.
Bull Shoals This Marion County city of 2,000 residents
enlisted 652 volunteers and logged 53,674 hours in volunteer
services. City improvements by the newly formed Beautification
Committee and the Bull Shoal's Lion's Club included floral
planting in wooden barrels in front of businesses and
completing a covered picnic area overlooking Bull Shoals
Lake. The City-Wide Yard Sale, Art in the Park and Vacation
Bible School were all events open for public pleasure;
the Annual Pancake Day raised money for area graduating
seniors. The Bull Shoals Theater of the Arts donated
4,642 hours in bringing entertainment from Nashville
and Branson and hosting Monday night "Jam Sessions."
The Bull Shoals library, fire department and police station
also benefited from volunteerism.
Dumas The Arkansas Delta city of Dumas celebrated its
centennial this year with a grandiose gala. More than
500 volunteers organized, planned and worked the four-day
Centennial Celebration for Dumas. It had everything from
an "Old Town Dumas" re-creation to a historical pageant;
the Harlem Globetrotters played various volunteer teams.
The celebration was coordinated with Dumas's annual Ding
Dong Days. The Women's Service League of Dumas hosted
the 30th annual Delta Arts and Craft Show. Among the
hopes of this farm-oriented community is that events
like these, made possible through volunteerism, will
help draw tourists.
Eureka Springs With a booming volunteer program and
a burgeoning arts scene, this northwest Arkansas municipality
may be redefining its exclamatory name. Nine self-defined
Action Teams, composed of more than 100 volunteers, help
shape a more art-focused and economically strong community.
Each Action Team has a defined specialty and works toward
one goal-to be awarded the Arkansas Community of Excellence
(ACE) status. The Action Teams' specialties are arts
and culture, beautification, business and industry, film,
housing, recreation, technology, tourism and transportation.
On the way to an ACE designation, the Action Teams of
this Carroll County city of 2,278 do just about everything
from helping make movies to cleaning litter to creating
maps of the historic district. Heber Springs If you overhear
a group of Heber Springs third graders describing their
classes as "soporific" and their teachers as "unbearably
lymphatic," don't be surprised. The Medley Club, a volunteer
group in Heber Springs, provides each third grader, along
with their teachers, a Webster's Dictionary, helping
the pupils become young verbalists. The program earned
the club a national certificate of recognition from the
General Federation of Women's Clubs. To keep this Cleburne
County city of 6,432 from becoming too soporific, there
is also the World Championship Cardboard Race and its
coinciding event, the Fourth of July Fireworks Extravaganza,
which are sponsored by the Heber Springs Area Chamber
of Commerce. A crowd of about 50,000 flooded the waterfront
city for the race and Extravaganza. Other programs, such
as the Cleburne County Cares and the Lake and River Clean
Up team, added to the 187,318 reported volunteer service
hours in Heber Springs for 2004.
Maumelle This city had so many volunteers that it had
to get a volunteer coordinator! Nicole Heaps, a longtime
volunteer in Maumelle, got the job. She directs programs
such as Counting on Each Other (CEO), which was developed
to provide previously overlooked services to senior citizens.
Transporting seniors to medical and dental appointments,
helping with housework and making minor home repairs
are all part of CEO's services. This program, along with
the Hometown Thanksgiving dinner, Steps/Encourager Program
and Hope-Alliance, has helped Maumelle earn the Volunteer
Community of the Year award for the third year in a row.
This year, 3,780 volunteers donated 151,925 hours in
public service.
McCrory Tornadoes are never good for cities, but oftentimes
a disaster builds camaraderie in a community. The May
4, 2003, tornado that hit the McCrory area did just that.
Teens and adults came together to clear trees from yards,
carry trash to donated trucks and provide needed help
for the general well-being of the community. But the
Arkansas-Delta municipality didn't need a disaster to
bring out volunteerism. Along with peewee sports, thrift
store and Boy and Girl Scout programs, the city of 1,850
promotes volunteerism for the elderly through society
bingo nights and auctions and for cancer victims with
the Relay for Life, a walk/run held in conjunction with
the city of Augusta that raised over $56,000 for the
American Cancer Society. McCrory residents gave a reported
37,573 hours of their time. Mountain Home Fundraising
is what this Baxter County city seems to do best. The
list of monies raised for a seemingly infinite number
of charities is long, but a few of the more astronomical
ones include: $380,000 raised by Partners in Education
to assist and tutor local students and teachers; $224,762
by the Hospital Auxiliary for wheelchairs, a fetal heart
monitor upgrade and more; and $45,000 by Our Kids, to
provide medical services to needy children. Mountain
Home's children get unexpected gifts every year from
Arkansas Bikers Aiming Toward Education and its Christmas
Wish Toy Run, which delivers thousands of toys to the
municipality's young people. Food drives, furniture donations
and scholarship programs are some more of the reasons
this city of 11,012 received a Volunteer Community of
the Year award. Mountain View Mountain View, deep in
the Ozark Mountains and hill country traditions, continues
to draw thousands of visitors to events such as the annual
Arkansas Folk Festival and the Great Arkansas Outhouse
Race. Music lovers seek out its concerts, town-square
jam sessions and off-the-wall entertainment. One of these
events alone can draw upwards of 50,000 people to this
city of 2,876. Its volunteer-driven Tourist Information
Center stays open six days a week to receive inquiries
and send tourist packets. The Mountain View Chamber of
Commerce volunteers orchestrate Caroling in the Caverns,
Christmas in the Ozarks, Trail of Lights and Bean Fest-to
the tune of 6,500 hours donated. Other volunteer services
also abound-cancer support, library operations, trash
and litter clean-ups and literacy programs to name a
few.
Tuckerman The Happy Quilters, a Jackson County band
of do-gooders who provide the elderly with warmth and
children with presents, is one of the most prolific volunteer
groups in the state. The four lively ladies who comprise
the quilting group began their project with a $500 grant
from Wal-Mart, which they used to buy quilting supplies.
The Happy Quilters were self-sufficient for a while by
making baby quilts, selling them and then buying more
supplies with the profits; but the ladies wanted to do
more. In 2003, they provided 48 lap quilts to nursing
home patients and shut-ins, 18 queen-size quilts to groups
in need, 12 doll quilts to schoolgirls and five full-size
quilts to victims of house fires. But the scope of the
Quilters' generosity has gone beyond providing quilts:
They raised $3,200 to help a Tuckerman man with his cancer
treatments, and they supplied motherly care to local
troops serving in Iraq though supply boxes, food baskets
and, of course, patriotic quilts. Warren A festival that
started in celebration of the tomato harvest almost half
a century ago has exploded into a national event! The
Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival celebrated its 48th
year this past June, drawing an estimated 30,000 people
to the community of 6,442; countless others watched on
the Food Network as part of its All-American Festivals
tour. The Great Bowls of Fire salsa contest, an all-tomato
luncheon and a scattering of other tasty events were
made possible through the 10,182 hours donated by 1,335
volunteers. Parades and pageants are also part of the
merrymaking for those who grow tired of the multifarious
tomato dishes.
The unincorporated communities of Clarkridge and Gamaliel,
both in northern Baxter County, were also recipients
of a Volunteer Community of the Year award.
Municipalities
around state seek share of Presidential Center's magnetic
aura
Volunteers
keeps cities and towns humming
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