Sean Mulcahy, left, Vicki Waller, and Jill Greathead will be giving shopkeepers a hand in the leadup to the Carterton Daffodil Festival. PHOTO/JASON IRELAND
BY EMILY NORMAN
A handful of Carterton residents have this weekend at the top of mind, recruiting volunteers to help spruce up the shopfronts for the Carterton Daffodil Festival.
It will be the second year this particular clean-up effort will be running, and volunteer Sean Mulcahy can’t wait.
Last year he was inspired to help clean the Carterton shopfronts for the big festival after doing his own spring cleaning at home.
“I thought, gosh, Daffodil Festival is coming up and we’ll have lots of visitors to the town – and we want to put on our best face.
“So, I thought I would get a group of volunteers together to clean the shop frontages.”
Mr Mulcahy advertised for volunteers and recruited some friends as well.
Before he knew it, he had a band of 19 people on board with the project.
“We ended up doing it the day before on the Saturday afternoon last year.
“I visited all the retailers in the section we were doing, and most were very agreeable and surprised.”
He said the owner of Mirabelle ended up returning the favour with a plate of cakes for the volunteers – “that was wonderful”.
“Some people have said to me, isn’t this something the shopkeepers should be doing themselves?
“And yes, you could say that, but they’re busy people and they provide us a great service in Carterton keeping their businesses on the go, so this is something we can do to help them.
“We need to make sure we’re all spick and span for Daffodil Day because we’ll be getting lots of visitors.”
Mr Mulcahy welcomes any volunteers to join in with the project this Saturday.
They will meet at 2pm at Heart of Arts in Carterton, and finish at 4pm.
“The more people that turn up, we can do it quicker and better.
“I suggest people bring squeegees, cloths and a bucket.
“If they’ve got a small step ladder, bring that along.”
