City honors volunteers at Be More Awards

The City of Bloomington recognized nine individuals and one group Tuesday night for volunteering, during the annual Be More Awards at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

“Tonight is about all of you, the faces behind the numbers, the individuals and groups who were nominated for Be More Awards,” Master of Ceremonies Joe Hren of WTIU said to the audience.

The numbers to which Hren was referring were statistics about volunteering.

“An average of 26 percent of people in the U.S. volunteer, 28 percent of people in Indiana and 34 percent of people in Bloomington,” Hren said.

This year, there were 52 nominations for 40 different organizations.

“This is Bloomington, not knowing half the faces, they showed up there,” Mayor Mark Kruzan said about a slide show that displayed the faces of all the nominees. “It just shows that we have hundreds of people out there willing to volunteer, and tonight was about recognizing at least some.”

Savich agreed that there were many new or unknown volunteers.

“The selection committee didn’t even initially know everyone nominated,” said Bet Savich, director of the City of Bloomington Volunteer Network.

The tornado clean-up volunteers of Van Buren Township were honored with the Be More Collaborative Award, which is reserved for group efforts.

Other award winners included IU student Emily Bornstein (Be More Involved Award) and Bloomington High School North student Hannah Fidler, winner of the Be More Energized Award.

Speakers from various Bloomington-area organizations introduced the award winners, as well as those who nominated them, and the award winners gave remarks.

They were each then given their awards and a $500 check from the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County to be donated to each winner’s
organization.

“It’s enough to see that light go on in a child’s face when they learn something or in someone’s face when you help them,” Fidler said, addressing the crowd. “But it’s nice to be with all of you and your accomplishments, and to be recognized is great.”

Award winners consisted of a group of varied age and both genders, and this fact was not lost on Kruzan.

“The diversity of volunteers ... again, that is Bloomington,” Kruzan said. “Every year, it’s a different group, different team. It’s too bad you can never thank everyone.”

Lee Marchant, who won the Be More Dedicated Award for recognition of a lifetime of volunteering, echoed these sentiments.

“To me, the real heroes of this community are the ones who are unrecognized, the unknown people,” Marchant said. “I’m so honored and so humbled.”

Savich said it’s important to have celebrations like this to both honor volunteers’ hard work and to remind people not to be complacent.

“There are always a lot of smiles, and we had another exciting evening,” Savich said. “This is always the most fun work day of the year. But we need to remember not to take things for granted. People look at the Shalom Center and think it’s always been there. They don’t realize all the work it took to develop it.”