In honour of National Volunteer Week (April 7th to the 13th), Cochrane will once again hold a red carpet event for our community gems who unselfishly give their time to make Cochrane a better place. 

Renita Bartlett, Community Liaison and Programmer for the Voluntary Sector says the 11th annual 'thank you' celebration at the Cochrane Movie House is being planned for April 6th. "It is always wonderful when we have the opportunity to celebrate our volunteers. I have noticed there is a lot of hype around volunteering in the Cochrane community, which is amazing to see, and having the ability to celebrate volunteers is really important to us at FCSS."

The Volunteer Appreciation Event is absolutely free and family-friendly as organizers recognize that volunteering can take away time from regular family life. "This year the movies we are looking at are the Green Book, A Dog's Way Home, as well as the new Spider-Man movie (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)."

Another great component of the event is the amount of support it receives from our local business community. Each year numerous businesses jump on board to salute our community volunteers by contributing to a number of door prizes. "We have a lot of donations that have come in and new ones coming in every day, so it will be exciting to draw for those and hand them out."

The doors to the morning celebration will open at 9 a.m. with movies getting underway for 10 bells. "Before the movie gets going we are going to have a performance by Riverside Jazz for live entertainment, the Mayor and some members of council will be there to meet and greet the volunteers of the community, as well as an RCMP member and our rodeo royalty. It gives volunteers the opportunity to mix and mingle while meeting with folks who perhaps they don't meet with very often."

While movie tickets are not quite ready to be picked up at Family and Community Support Services, Bartlett suggests marking the date of April 6th down and securing your spot to the celebration as soon as they become available.