Volunteers make it happen

 
By STEPHANIE SPENCER

The definition of volunteer is a person who offers to help or work without expecting payment or reward. And if it weren’t for dozens of them, the Kirtland’s Warbler Festival would be just another great idea that never happened.

“The Festival could not take place without our volunteers,” said Jim Enger, marketing director at Kirtland Community College and chairman of the event. Upwards of 80 volunteers give their time to the Festival each year without pay.

About half of them are employees of the college. Others include residents of surrounding communities, students, and the RSVPs – those active members of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program.

Volunteers are found everywhere during the Warbler Festival, and they are there to help. Just look for the forest green jackets with the unique graph on the back showing the remarkable growth in numbers of a species once seriously endangered.

“The jackets let people know they can find help,” said Enger.

The volunteers greet festivalgoers in the parking lots. They sell buttons around attractions that require them. They work the fishing pond and the kids’ activity tent. They’re on the wagon rides, around the agency displays in the Student Center. They’re helping folks sign up for the warbler tours. And they roam the campus interviewing those in attendance in order to make future festivals even more attractive.

Carole Chilton, who retired last year after 30 years with the college, organizes all of these volunteers.

“Carole Chilton has one of the most important jobs on the festival committee, if not the most important,” Enger said. “She does a great job.”

Chilton and her small but committed staff make hundreds of phone calls every spring to round up the group of volunteers. By April, most of them know where they’ll be assigned for as little as a few hours to the entire day. About a dozen of them will work the second day, as well, which was added in order to take more birders into the jack pine forests for a chance to see the Kirtland’s warbler.

“The volunteers are a great group of people,” Chilton said.