Opinon: Canal fest highlights need for new blood

It’s a special individual who gives their time and knowledge to help others.

We all know someone who fits that description.

They’re the ones with the big hearts. The selfless ones who want to make their community better.

They may respond to ambulance calls. Or fire calls.

They may help coach a Little League team, umpire a game or sell candy bars and soda in the concession stand.

They may live down the street. Or around the block.

They may be a relative or a lifelong friend.

But lately, it seems, they’re a vanishing breed.

We call them volunteers.

And their demise is slowly chipping away at some of the institutions we’ve come to know.

Take, for example, the Walnutport Canal Festival scheduled for Oct. 15.

This year will be the last as we’ve come to know it.

Organizers say it’s not because of a lack of interest, but the reason is something none of us can escape.

Simply put, the festival is a victim of age.

For more than 40 years, the Walnutport Canal Association has been staging the event, and time has taken its toll.

The group, still active, just doesn’t have enough people to share setup responsibilities. The core group of members who’ve been showing up on a regular basis is getting older, making it harder to deal with staffing for the daylong event and tearing it down afterward.

It’s one of the latest of myriad events, organizations and activities that have ended or will end in the near future for various reasons – not just aging.

When events like the canal festival come to the end of the road, the ripple effect squeezes the budgets of nonprofits that showed up over the years to make it a success.

The vendors, crafters, fire companies, and others who would be part of the event lose an opportunity to sell their wares, spread their message – and even possibly recruit volunteers of their own.

Over the last few months, there’s been some evidence of that, though under different circumstances.

We learned the Kunkletown Volunteer Fire Department stopped its monthly breakfast last December. The reasons? Rising cost of food, products and utilities, not to mention falling attendance.

Another event, a yard sale that helped fund a historic chapel in Normal Square, ended because of the lack of help.

So it is with the food pantry at Tamaqua’s Trinity United Church of Christ, where the shelves could soon go bare without staffing, if they haven’t already.

The volunteer pool no longer has a deep end, mostly because of lifestyle changes over the years.

One of the biggest changes came during the COVID epidemic, when people dealing with shutdowns, closures and a general fear of falling ill pulled back on their willingness to share their time in service to others.

Younger generations often work several jobs to stay afloat. They have less time to volunteer.

And the nature, itself, of people donating their time to help others is shifting.

Some volunteers – like local firefighters – invest countless hours to the cause. Many of those hours go toward fundraising, maintaining equipment and facilities and learning how to make themselves better at what they already do so well. Still, many find the time to share as part of other community-based groups.

Often, local business and industry encourages employees to take part in volunteer efforts on designated days. Workers will help a local organization or spruce up a facility in a day of caring or local cleanup.

Larger events – like the canal festival – may be fading.

But smaller ones, like food truck gatherings, craft shows, historical tours and similar activities are taking their place. They have fewer moving parts, don’t take as long to organize, little or no setup time and overall, just make a volunteer effort easier.

For now, though, the people who organize and staff those events still have the same spirit they did on the first day they reported for duty.

They show the same sense of purpose and connection in the communities they serve and still exhibit the same desire to improve lives – their own and others.

Volunteer and service organizations need to recruit and foster new memberships. At the same time, potential volunteers should think about ways to get involved.

New blood spawns new ideas to help those with specific needs and the community in general. It helps preserve our past, maintain our present and brightens our future.

And makes us all a little better.

ED SOCHA/[email protected]

Ed Socha is a retired newspaper editor with more than 40 years experience in community journalism. Reach him at [email protected].

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.