Volunteer Airdrie held the first of a pair of Volunteer Recognition Red Carpet Movie events this morning (Saturday) at the Roxy Theatre in Airdrie.

The show, with free pop, popcorn and prizes, was a way of saying thanks to the volunteers for their efforts at the start of National Volunteer Week which runs April 23rd to 29th, according to Melanie Taylor, the Executive Director of Volunteer Airdrie.

"Every day in our community, members of our community do these amazing things.  They help their neighbours, they go to the food bank or Community Links and volunteer their time.  National Volunteer Week is about saying thank you to that.  So the reason for our event is to invite all of our volunteers, whether you help out at your kids school or help out at your kids sports event or whether you go to those other non-profits in the community to say thank you for that."

Taylor says the main purpose of National Volunteer Week is all about doing just that, saying thank you.  "National Volunteer Week is all about recognition and awareness.  We want to make sure everybody understands what volunteerism is, how they could get involved, we're certainly here to talk about that as well, but it's really just about saying thank you for all of the things that have already happened in our community and saying thank you."

Taylor thinks that volunteers are the backbone of any community and she doesn't want to think about what would happen if there weren't any volunteers.  "I think that we wouldn't have a very exciting or very inclusive community.  Every day we're out there, we're including each other and we're creating diversity and we're learning from each other, we're creating help for our social issues and people that need support.   Without our volunteers, we wouldn't have any of that."

A second red carpet event is taking place tomorrow morning at 9:00 at the Roxy Theatre.