On Saturday, June 28 the Barre Partnership and TD Bank Barre will provide a huge shot in the arm to the downtown Barre area community. The Barre Community Ambassadors volunteer outreach program will be launched on that day, providing local residents with a wide variety of opportunities to get involved in Barre’s exciting revitalization. The goal of the program is to recruit, retain and reward local community-minded volunteers who want to contribute to building a vital downtown Barre area community.
This important partnership between the Barre Partnership and TD Bank Barre was forged when Shane Mispel, TD Bank’s Barre branch manager, expressed an interest in becoming more involved in the Barre area community. He and TD Bank wanted to support what the Barre Partnership is doing on to re-establish Barre as the social, cultural and economic hub of Central Vermont while creating a real sense of place in its downtown.
A team of local Barre area volunteers including Carol MacDougall, Kim Kie, Emilye Pelow Corbet, and Shane Mispel, working with Dan Jones, Barre Partnership executive director, named the organization the Barre Community Ambassadors with Strength Through Community as its tagline. They developed a dynamic action plan to get the program up and running and decided on June 28th for the program’s official launch.
The initial goal of the team is to introduce the Barre Community Ambassadors to the public and immediately begin recruiting volunteers (Ambassadors) to help out during this summer’s Barre Heritage Festival. They will then begin to work on finding Ambassadors for an ever-growing variety of tasks – planning special events, meeting with business owners, planting flowers, picking up litter, raising funds, conducting meetings, taking photographs, putting up posters, organizing parades, sitting as targets in a dunk tank, writing grants, doing data entry, decorating Main Street, conducting business surveys, managing a website and social media, writing a newsletter, and much more.
The emphasis will be on providing timely, detailed information on volunteer opportunities utilizing a variety of tools that will make the decision to get involved an easy one. As the Ambassadors grow in number, the team will focus on creating positive relationships with and among the Ambassadors utilizing a Barre Community Ambassador newsletter and informal Ambassador social events. Ambassadors will also be given access to the National Trust Main Street Center’s member-only website where they can learn about downtown revitalization and community building. Finally, Ambassadors will be rewarded with an annual Ambassador Appreciation event, individual awards, and public recognition. And of course they will receive their coveted Barre Community Ambassador t-shirt.
The June 28th Barre Community Ambassadors launch will be a free community-wide family event with any and all Barre area community members invited. It will take place from 11am to 2pm at the Barre Elks Lodge and will feature live music by Native Tongue, food made available from a number of Barre’s excellent food establishments, drawings for prizes, a brief presentation on the variety of ways to get involved, information tables providing sign-up opportunities and more.
Dan Jones says, “Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Barre Partnership and the downtown Barre area community. Everyone in Barre wants our downtown to be a vibrant center of community life where everyone can enjoy gathering with their neighbors. The Ambassadors program provides every Barre area community member with the opportunity to get involved and to make a difference in the health of their community. We’re looking forward to having a huge turnout for the June 28 launch party.”
For information on the Barre Community Ambassadors and the June 28 launch party, contact Dan Jones, Barre Partnership executive director, at director@thebarrepartnership.com or 802-477-2967.
