The 56th Annual Borrego Days Festival, scheduled for October 22 – 23, is already in production mode and once again dealing with more challenging times. With the rapid rise in costs, the Chamber is making sure that the Festival continues with its family fun traditions to be the best that it can be. This year, we are expanding the kids zone, adding a large tent in the beer garden for more shade, bringing in new performers for Saturday and Sunday, plus a few surprises in the planning stages.

For the parade, our goal is to bring back its hometown roots with no entry fees, encourage more locals and local businesses to participate, floats, dignitaries and announcers along with parade favorites from out of the area that just love Borrego Days. We’ll forgo official judging and have some fun awards decided by festival goers instead.

With this said, in order for the parade to happen we need two core groups of volunteers. Group One will be traffic control/safety volunteers under the direction of Fred Jee. This will entail five members to help pick up the cones and barriers on Friday from the maintenance yard and partially distribute them. Saturday morning early, voluneers will meet Jee at the designated location and place the cones and barriers closing off side streets and around the Circle. After the parade, the cones/barriers only for the parade will be picked up and stored until it’s time to collect all of the Festival cones and return to the maintenance yard Sunday afternoon, starting at 3 p.m.

Group Two: Parade production volunteers consisting of at least six people – including group leader. The Chamber will send out and collect all of the parade applications. The week prior to the parade, I will give the applications to the parade committee in which the parade committee will arrange the parade applications in order of their place in the parade – starting from one to a time to be determined. They will make up two announcer books for the parade announcers. They will then arrive early Saturday morning to check parade participants in and make sure they are in their assigned location. They will coordinate with myself to start the parade and stay onsite until the last participant begins their walk down Palm Canyon Drive, which they’ll need to collect the check-in table and chairs and drop off at the Chamber Info/Volunteer booth. The committee leaders are welcome to start working with me at any time before the Festival so it is a fun and rewarding experience.

Please give the above some thought and if you love a parade, we want you! The deadline (because of County permits) for parade volunteers is July 15, 5 p.m. So no one’s confused about Festival Volunteers, last year’s Festival volunteer coordinator Joy McBride and the Chamber started working on Festival volunteers in a separate notice.

To volunteer for Group One Traffic Control/Safety or Group Two Parade Production email Borregochamberdirector@gmail.com or call 760-767-5555, all we currently need is your name, contact info, group selection. Thank you and lets have a parade!

Françoise Rhodes,

Executive Director

– Borrego Springs Chamber of Commerce & Welcome Center

760-767-5555

visitborrego@gmail.com

borregospringschamber.com

#embraceborrego