Elkhart Parks and Recreation Doubles Down on Investing in Volunteer Engagement

By Mark Datema, Elkhart Parks and Recreation Board Member

The Elkhart Parks and Recreation Department turns the vision of their new Volunteer Coordinator position into reality with a coordinated effort to clear trash and debris from a section of riverbank and paint a portion of the pedestrian bridge near the Elkhart Health and Aquatics Center.

Thanks to community members and businesses with the desire to volunteer their time and resources to the City of Elkhart, it became increasingly necessary for the Parks and Recreation Department to support community involvement and corporate partnership events with a dedicated liaison. To address this need, the department created the Volunteer Coordinator position.

The Volunteer Coordinator position officially began in 2022 with the mission to build community relationships and attract organizations and businesses to have meaningful and enriching opportunities to support the Elkhart Parks and Recreation Department. Cultivating these partnerships will benefit the community by producing significant improvements to the city parks and divert otherwise costly maintenance allocations to other Parks Department programming and quality of life offerings.

The Elkhart Parks Department was fortunate to attract an incredibly talented and ambitious woman to serve for the Initiatory Volunteer Coordinator position, Mrs. Haiam Gendi. Her passion and tenacity for the newly formed position was noticed immediately when she hosted a few volunteer events like the tulips removal at Nipco Park, Ideal Beach clean up day, and community garden assistance. The tulip removal event at Nipco Park was shared heavily on social media and intuitively attracted volunteers by offering the removed tulips for free. Elkhart has a very robust gardening community, so this naturally was an intelligent and well thought idea of hers. While her time was brief with the department her efforts and impact will long be felt.

Mrs. Gendi’s successor, Maddy Gordon presently maintains the duties of the new Volunteer Coordinator for the department and has instinctively found her footing in the new position. She has wasted no time in successfully coordinating a new partnership for the department.

The volunteer event, captioned above, occurred on October 10, 2022, with the goal of clearing trash and debris along the riverbanks of the Elkhart River near the newest health and wellness amenity to city residents the “Elkhart Health and Aquatics Center” as well as beautifying a pedestrian bridge nearby. Upon the arrival of the volunteers, staff welcomed and earnestly thanked them for their contributions towards the event. They then provided concise directives and goals for the event while handing out the necessary supplies needed to allow all volunteers to complete their tasks effectively.

Our Lead Park Ranger, Stan McCray also spoke to the group explaining any potential dangers related to the cleanup; standing by for any immediate needs that arise from participants or other park patrons. He assisted in helping maintain safety along the riverbank for participants and park patrons.

The event was a success with all planned tasks completed within the scheduled time frame. The store director of the group volunteering expressed an interest in a continued partnership with the Parks Department in a bigger way moving forward. This type of immediate feedback from participants not only reinforces the need for this position, but visibly demonstrates how valuable and important it will be for our Volunteer Coordinator to provide assiduous attention to detail in planning events so that they only look back on the experience as a positive one with the parks department. Positive experiences like this can also be a conduit for philanthropists to consider our department for donations or sponsorships of larger capital improvements in the future.

This volunteer day is just one example of many that the department aims to host going forward. These types of partnerships are low barrier opportunities for departments across the state to broaden the awareness of parks and identify non-fiscal ways to maintain the important assets that greenspaces are for a community. Just this 2 hour event alone collectively equated to 20 hours of service, saving the city approximately $500 in labor wages. Our event partner unexpectedly brought additional supplies for the event and left them intentionally for the department’s future use, saving even more money for the department. The Elkhart Parks Department is fortunate to have the support of community members, organizations, and corporate partnerships, and expects the addition of the Volunteer Coordinator to leave an exceptional perception of our department to those that partner with us.