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hours a year – and there is a committee that does pretty much the same. It’s a lot of work but the benefits are unbe- lievable when you consider that we are only a village of about four or five hundred people. The fact that we can bring in thousands and thousands of people to our com- munity every year like this is pretty cool. The money goes right back into the community to our sports centre. It helps pay for our hockey and figure skating programs which was the main goal on the Musicfest from the start. We want to grow to a point where we can pay for all the kids in the area to play minor hockey and or join figure skating if they want. I think we’ll be there in the next year or so. “I love to see the same couples, the same families return year after year.” I can see by the extensive list of sponsors on your website that both big business and smaller local busi- nesses are very much behind the Musicfest. Has this response also grown over the four years? For sure. The first year we were kind of banging on doors. Now the phone calls just keep coming in. This year we’ve had a lot of new companies approach us for sponsorships and partnerships and it’s really shown the naysayers how we get things done in Tyne Valley – but we couldn’t put it all
side, mostly people in their late twenties or early thirties like myself. And we have people in their 40s and 50s and 60s who really take interest in running the oyster supper and our parade and things like that. I started volunteering when I was 19, so really our volunteer base is from 19-70 and up. They’re an incredible group. We’ve never had problems trying to find volunteers, which some people might find hard to believe in such a small community but people here really love to help out. And that’s a part of it, right? If you’re willing to put the work into it, the rewards are going to be there. That first year I probably volunteered two or three thousand hours. After we got the bugs worked out, I still put in 1,000
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2017
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