Canadians enjoy their summers and tend to cram as much outdoor time and fun into the short season as possible.

Every year this area I live in has several events, this weekend is the biggy.
There isn’t a hotel, motel room or campground space available within 100 kilometers.

The four day event has been going on for over 15 years, and quickly outgrew itself, simply because it packs a lot of bang for your buck.
The municipality had to hire a full time event co-ordinator and get corporate sponsors.

This year the corporate sponsor is Pepsi.
That’s nice.
But as we head into the weekend, I really hope this company relaxes some very foolish er, suggestions and decisions regarding volunteers.

Nearly 500 volunteers give a lot of time, skill and energy to see that visitors to the venue are well taken care of. Many of us work a lot longer than our ’shift.’ Local business puts a lot in without expecting economic return, just because of pride of community.

Pepsi has decided that volunteers will be given their bottled water product.
Their other products will be available for us to buy onsite.
Excuse me?
Pepsi has also requested that those of us that bring in drinks, bring in their product please.
Excuse me?

This is definitely a short sighted, bottom line decision that has ticked a lot of people off.
Sometimes corporate sponsors are good, sometimes not so good.

Pepsi event employees will ensure their products are advertised on site from here to the middle of next week. The company goes into sponsorship to generate revenue and create good will. They’ll get their revenue, the good will is up for grabs.
A decision by a multi billion dollar company to treat the people that make this happen according to their concept of the bottom line does not play well here.
Makes me want to break their ‘rules.’
I won’t. I along with hundreds of other volunteers will be too busy to bother. Going into this weekend, it’s apparent Pepsi doesn’t have a clue about value for services.
If they took our group of 20 volunteers out of the picture, it would cost the municipality 40 thousand dollars to provide similar service. Our mandate and ethics dictate that we don’t take payment for what we do. We wouldn’t want to. But we do need to eat and drink. Pepsi’s decision shows little respect for the very event it is sponsoring.
Our small group aside, what about the volunteers that stand for hours in the hot sun? Security, first aiders, block parents? These people are giving because they want to help others. Do city work crews police, fire, and ambulance personnel rate bottled water from a multi billion dollar company?

If Pepsi doesn’t relax the ‘rules’ after being on site and seeing the effort all these people put into volunteerism, I won’t buy their product again. And, I think I can quite safely say, I won’t be the only one. If Pepsi doesn’t grasp the poor ethics of their decision I also hope next year they’ll take their sponsorship elsewhere.