Tell Us Your Volunteer Story
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This year marks the 20th anniversary of Mariposa Folk Festival back in Orillia. To help mark the occasion, we are collecting interesting volunteer stories for possible inclusion at a special Volunteer Recognition Display.
If you have a good volunteer story, please tell it to us. If you have more than one, or even several, please tell them all, but please limit your stories to 250 words each. If you could accompany your story with a digital photo, that would be awesome. Make sure to include your full name, volunteer team or role, and the approximate year your story took place.
The stories will be curated, and the selected stories will be attributed to you and assembled in a Volunteer Memories Display during the Festival. Some of these stories may also be shared on our social media platforms.
By virtue of submitting a story, you are authorizing the Mariposa Folk Foundation to publish it. All those who submitted a story will be entered into a random draw for a $50 gift certificate.
Please submit your story by June 21st, 2019, but the sooner the better. All stories and photo attachments should be submitted to reception@mariposafolk.com. Please write “Volunteer Story” in the subject line.
We are sure there are lots of entertaining Mariposa volunteer stories to be told. Please tell us yours!
Did you know that Mariposa volunteers serve several hundred meals each day to artists and festival guests in the Green Room (tent actually) in the restricted are behind the Main Stage? Most of the preparation is done in donated commercial kitchens, and the food is transported and served at the festival. It takes hundreds of hours of preparation and planning, and great care goes into ensuring the meals are nutritionally balanced and of high quality. Not only that, everything is done to meet the high and exacting standards of Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit. In this photo, volunteers are hard at work in the kitchen of Birchmere On-The-Lake, baking the 5,000 cookies typically consumed during the run of the weekend. The volunteer leading the baking team has a badly fractured arm (you can see the cast in the photo), but that didn’t stop her from getting the job done. This is just one of the many, integral, behind-the-scenes jobs our volunteers do. All told, we have an army of more than 600 volunteers, and each and every one of these great people is essential to putting on a wonderful festival for you to enjoy.