A swath of community groups will join forces Saturday, Sept. 6, from 10 a.m. to noon so Riverside residents can hear how they can get involved and give back.
The Riverside Public Library organized the fair, which is co-sponsored by the village and Riverside Township. The fair will take place at Riverside Township Hall, 27 Riverside Rd., in the second-floor auditorium.
“The community organization fair is designed to allow people in the public to come and find out all about the variety of service organizations that exist in and around Riverside,” said Diane Silva, the library’s assistant director and manager of information services and the fair’s main organizer. “It’s designed to be an opportunity to find out about places you can volunteer or ways you can get more connected to your community through various means of service.”
Residents who attend will be able to enter into a raffle for a “secret, library-based door prize,” Silva said.
The 20 participating groups include Riverside Township, the Olmsted Society of Riverside, Ride Riverside, Pillars Community Health, the Riverside Chamber of Commerce, the Riverside Township Community Resource Center, the Village of Riverside, Riverside Rocks, American Legion Post 488, Riverside Parks & Recreation, the Riverside Area Refugee Resettlement Team, the Share Food Share Love food pantry, Riverside Arts Weekend, the Riverside Community Garden, the Progress Center for Independent Living, the Riverside Juniors Woman’s Charity, the Riverside Community Caucus, the Pathway to Adventure Council, Riverside Friends of the Library and the Riverside Township Lions Club.
Riverside Little League and Knights of Columbus can’t make it due to prior commitments, but both organizations will have handouts available for people interested in learning more, Silva said.
“We have so many great groups in town that are eager to get their message out, and it’s harder and harder to get that message out about the variety of things that exist and ways to serve,” she told the Landmark. “We had a lot of people reaching out as soon as we publicized it … If anything, we could have had a larger venue and thrown an even wider net out to surrounding communities.”
Silva said she felt more residents than before simply didn’t know about the breadth of organizations within Riverside due to the influx of people moving to the village in recent years.
“Twenty years ago, there were a lot of people who had lived here their whole lives, but now, more and more people are finding Riverside as a community, but making those connections is harder because everybody isn’t familiar with everything when they move into town,” she said. “It was becoming increasingly important as the library, and also for the township and the village, to make sure we had ways of bringing new people to our community and connecting them to a community in a way that’s always been very traditional and part of who we are but doesn’t naturally occur in the same ways these days.”
Silva said she hoped residents would be able to find a group they wish to volunteer for and those who might not be interested in giving their time can learn about at least one community group they hadn’t known existed.
“There are so many groups, and you forget that they’re all there and that they’re all looking for people to both help with their mission and to connect with on a personal level,” she said. “Even if you’ve been here forever and you think you know everything going on, I think you might still be surprised.”
