Volunteers help drive Jeep festival
WORTH TWP — About 1,100 Jeeps are registered for the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival at Cooper's Lake Campground, and an army of about 400 volunteers will ensure every event runs smoothly.
“Some of those volunteers might be doing three different shifts, some might be doing one, but we are grateful for anything people do. We're very fortunate,” said Patti Jo Lambert, director of the festival.
“We've had several groups step up to help us, and that's really what this event needed to evolve.
“We have a group of guys from the American Legion Riders helping us with parking on Friday, and one of the most exciting developments we have is a new partnership with the U.S. Army Reserve unit out of Meadville. They contacted us and said they'd like to make their drill weekend the same weekend as the festival.”
So the Jeep festival will have 25 to 30 well-conditioned men and women “doing whatever we need them to do to make the event successful” among its volunteers, Lambert said happily.
Volunteers mostly are needed to help with traffic control, parking and crowd control at entrances. Volunteers must be at least 18 years old and willing to work four-hour shifts.
Anyone who volunteers will be given a free T-shirt and a spectator wristband for one guest on the day they volunteer. They will also receive two raffle tickets.
Lambert said a minimum of about 150 volunteers will work at any given time during the weekend, peaking Saturday, when many events are occurring simultaneously.
Lambert and volunteers from the 20-to-30-member planning committee for the festival will host a volunteer orientation Wednesday night, giving volunteers a tour of the venue layout and answering their questions.Several Jeep clubs will run Jeep competitions, such as the Show 'N' Shine and Ruff 'N' Tough, while the largest group of volunteers will oversee parking control and traffic control. Smaller groups will assist with events and activities such as on-site registration, admissions, merchandise, and the Little Jeepers Playground, as well as raffles, Roll Your Jeep and the Mystery Road Rally.“It's a massive task. It takes us more than 40 hours just to staff our volunteers, looking at who we have, who is available when, and matching them to the tasks they'd like to do,” Lambert said.She said volunteers were to start the initial setup at Cooper's Lake Campground this past Saturday, with full-fledged setup to begin today.
