Each year, the Township of King wants to honour and celebrate one of the Township’s most important resources: its volunteers. The nomination period for 2025 has now opened. This is your opportunity to shine a spotlight on the unsung hero in your life who embodies the spirit of selflessness and community service. Nominations for King’s 2025 Volunteer Appreciation Awards are open now through March 9. Award categories include: Citizen of the Year, Special Recognition Award: Resident & Non-Resident, Senior Citizen Award of Merit, Lifetime Achievement and Youth Award of Merit. Here is award criteria and nomination details.
Volunteer awards have been a marvellous tradition in King Township over many years, a time when the community can recognize our volunteer heroes and come together to celebrate in an annual public event. Township staff have done an excellent job organizing this event and creating a wonderful evening celebration over many years. I’d love to see this tradition continue where all are welcome to come and celebrate.
Five years ago, COVID interrupted this tradition, and when this event was renewed in 2023, attendance for the celebration was limited to select guests. A good number of people expressed their concern to Council and Staff, and yet in 2024 the Volunteer Award Night was again organized as an exclusive event, and was not truly a community celebration. This is one of the few times when the whole King Community can come together to recognize and celebrate the wonderful service of King’s citizen volunteers. Let’s welcome the whole community!
Hi Bruce, Thank you for voicing your feelings on this.
Why does the Township recognize so few volunteers these days? There used to be a lot of volunteers who got recognized. Now it looks as if there are very few volunteers in King. I agree with Bruce that the volunteer nights in the past have been a wonderful event and a great way to celebrate volunteers. Now it is like a secret society. Nobody knows when the event is happening and only get to read about it afterwards.
Hello Nancy, I don’t understand the basis for your statement that Township is recognizing fewer volunteers these days. I have not taken the time to count but all those recognized the past 4 years are listed. https://www.king.ca/awardrecipients The categories for awards has not been changed/reduced and in each one there is at least one person being awarded. I don’t have the promotional material for previous years but this year, even though it is an invitation event the date is identified.
Volunteer Awards
Thank you for providing the links to those years. I just remember years ago there were lots of people acknowledged and last year there were only 9. In 2023, there were 29. In 2022, there were 18. In 2019 there were 16. There were of course no awards in the COVID years.
It has got to the point where there seems to be no point in nominating anyone for an award because they will likely be rejected since the numbers seem to have been restricted.
Hi Nancy, It is so easy to be cynical, particularly these days. It is correct that every nomination does not end up with an award. Council tries to be selective taking into account all nominations received (i.e. comparing), previous awards. I would like to point out that your interpretation of the declining numbers assumes a constant number of nominations. Personally, cynicism drags me down and I can accomplish nothing as I assume the worst…so why bother. I hope you will reconsider and submit a nomination.