After a dormant period influenced by the pandemic, the Piedmont City Council’s Volunteer award is back and ready to recognize outstanding members of Piedmont, “The city of Volunteers.”
The Volunteer award was created by former mayor Margaret Fujioka and approved by the City Council in 2014 to honor Piedmont citizens and ensure hard work is not overlooked.
“Piedmont has long been known as a city of volunteers, so she wanted to highlight the volunteers in the community,” City Clerk Anna Brown said.
Brown said Fujioka thought it would be a wonderful idea to recognize the residents of Piedmont, who give so much of their time.
However, this year Brown said the City Council wanted to expand the award to younger community members as well. This year, one of the winners will be under 25, while the others will be over 25.
“There are five general categories [used to find a winner]: Community enrichment, cultural and heritage, volunteering in the arts, social, or allyships,” Brown said.
Brown said these categories are used to guide council members when they disagree on how to determine a winner.
“What we do is, [compared to] teachers having a rubric where they grade your assignment based on certain criteria, they give it points,” Brown said. “So we established a rubric for that as well. That way, it would be non-biased, and we do blind scoring.”
Brown said volunteers can be nominated on the City Council’s website and will be considered blind to their identities using the rubric. The nominees’ resumes will not be tied to their names during the decision-making process.
“We hope to have the awardees determined by April 13, and the annual reception on April 20,” Brown said.
The award winners are announced and celebrated at a ceremonial reception. No restrictions were stated regarding who can vote for a nominee.
“The goal is–we do recognize our board members and our commissioners–but we also recognize that there are a lot of people out there who don’t get their kudos,” Brown said.
Brown said the award aims to bring those people forward and champion them. It’s a way to celebrate the volunteer spirit in Piedmont and encourage others to get involved.
