Believe it or not, we are only one month away from the Flowertown Festival. Everyone in town seems to be making preparations to volunteer for the festival. I will volunteer my time at booths for the three organizations with which I am affiliated. I know that by the end of the weekend, I will be one tired puppy. Last year I woke up on Monday morning after working at the festival for three days, incredulously questioning whether I really had to drag my tired bones out of bed. The answer to that one was yes, and I did. Who said being the boss means you can stay home when you want to? Not in my world, you can’t.
Despite how tired I was, it was nothing compared to the time and energy the YMCA volunteers put into the festival. Each year shortly after the festival is over, the YMCA employees, board members, and volunteers start planning next year’s festival. They know that without this planning and hard work, the festival will not be the pleasant community event that it is. They know that without this planning, the enormous crowds that have been drawn to Summerville for so many years may stop coming.
There has been a lot of coverage in the news and in the pages of this paper about the YMCA recently. As a new member of the YMCA board, I’d like to set the record straight. The YMCA is not some big bad corporation out to benefit personally from the festival. The YMCA strives to provide a safe, family-oriented environment where the values of caring, honesty, responsibility and faith are demonstrated and encouraged by others. Their goal is to ensure that no one is denied the experience of the YMCA because of the inability to pay.
When did we become a society that looks out only for number one and what is in it for me? There comes a time when all of us must look beyond ourselves at what we can do to help our community. What can we do to help those less fortunate in the community? We may not be able to do that individually but we don’t have to. The YMCA and other civic organizations do it for us.
The YMCA uses the profits from the festival to help fund member and program scholarships for families. The program scholarships cover things such as after-school care, aquatics, summer camp, gymnastics, and youth sports for those that cannot afford it. There are children who would not be able to participate in youth sports in our community without this assistance.
 They use member scholarships to provide reduced fees for members who become unemployed or who are having financial difficulties that make them unable to pay member fees. They recently partnered with the Summerville police department on a program to pick up children who have been identified as being at risk and bring them to the YMCA to participate in after school programs at no charge. Despite providing over $80,000 in scholarships to over 800 members of the community last year, there was more need than there was money available.
Most of us could not imagine spring in Summerville without the Flowertown Festival. Without the YMCA organizing this event, it would not exist. Many, many people in our community volunteer their time for the Y or for service organizations to which they belong to make the festival the event that it is.
I don’t know if you remember the scene in “American President” where Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd challenges Bob Rumson to see what he has done to make things better. Well, I’m not near so eloquent as President Shepherd, or Michael Douglas for that matter, but then again, I don’t have Hollywood writers producing my speech for me. But, in that vein, I challenge those who have criticized the YMCA to look within themselves to see what they have done for this community. Do they volunteer their time to organizations whose only purpose is the betterment of this community, or do they sit back and whine and ask “What’s in it for me?”
I, for one, will volunteer my time that weekend. And, yes, again, I will be one tired puppy when I drag these tired old bones out of bed early on Monday morning. I will also feel like I have made this community a better place by volunteering my time to help an organization founded on the principles of helping others and making our community a healthy thriving place to live.
Although not one of us can accomplish this alone, all of us working together for the good of the community can do anything.
We prove this every year during Flowertown Festival weekend.