CHICO — Downtown’s City Plaza saw a two-day fundraiser this Father’s Day weekend as Celebration of People, the nonprofit that puts on the Chico Pioneer Day Parade, raised funds to help bring back the parade next year.
Unable to host a parade in 2020, Celebration of People had hoped to host the Chico Pioneer Day Parade this year but come the beginning of the year, decided it wasn’t quite safe enough yet.
“We used a lot of our cash to pay for the last two years insurance,” said Sean Chen of Celebration of People. “We were afraid that if we were to cancel that insurance it might be really difficult to get a new insurance or the insurance might double or quadruple.”
As a nonprofit, the group continued to pay high insurance fees without any scheduled events with the hopes that things would return to normal. Now in order to help raise money for future events, the Celebration of People is planning smaller scale food, arts, and craft events where profits from their drink sales will go back into the parade.
While they had originally planned for a Mother’s Day fundraiser, slow movement on a permit caused them to postpone the event to Father’s Day.
“We prepared to do this event in 90 to 95 degree weather. I think yesterday we may have broken a Chico record,” Chen laughed.
Chen said that with the high temperatures, the event saw multiple people decide to back out. Worse, food trucks weren’t able to come because of the heat that their generators run at. But that didn’t stop them from having a good time, said Richard Elsom, the president of the nonprofit.
“We were trying to raise funds for the parade but we’re also friend-raising and we’ve had some great volunteers that we’ve never had the opportunity to work with before,” said Elsom.
Elsom has been organizing parades since 1996 when he helped bring back the Celebration of People parade before it transitioned to the Chico Pioneer Day Parade. After working with the nonprofit for 10 years, Elsom became president of the Celebration of People in 2006.
“When people talk about the parade, it’s never anything I did,” Elsom joked. “‘Wow. Those trash cans, they were really well placed! That barricade — that street was closed off really well!'”
Despite having a large-hand in organizing the parade, Elsom said he can’t take credit for it. What impresses him is the talent that shows up.
“Part of our focus for the Celebration of People is to provide opportunities for people to do that sort of thing,” Elsom said of the skilled performers. “It’s also an opportunity for kids to come down and have fun doing whatever and that’s the connection that we want to do. If I could do this for free I would.”
After having to cancel this year’s parade and excessive heat interfering with their Father’s Day event, Celebration of Life is already looking ahead.
“You go for the best and you do the best you can,” Elsom said. “I would much rather do this and have it not be monetarily successful than to have just cancelled because it’s probably not going to be successful. You have to go for it.”
Now planning is already underway for the 2022 Chico Pioneer Day Parade.
“Every event, we have a little bit more infrastructure. We’ve got almost a year until the next parade but we’re hoping to get three, four or five more events in between now and then,” Elsom said. “Every time we get a little bit better.”
Celebration of People currently has City Plaza reserved for September 25 with plans for a larger-scale artisan fair. The Chico Pioneer Day Parade is scheduled for May 7 next year.
More information, and to donate to the nonprofit, can be found at https://ift.tt/3gRJ2kH
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June 21, 2021 at 04:40PM
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Father’s Day craft and drink event raises funds for parade - Chico Enterprise-Record
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