09/21/2026
Hello! Im Chantel your new page liaison for the friendship festival. Im new to the board this year. When things looked rough instead of backing away or complaining, I stayed and stepped up to try to make a positive difference for the families in our community. We needed a fresh, positive person here on social media, so here I am. 😊 I know mistakes were made, I know we need communication improvement on the board, so Im here to help make a positive impact for all. I strongly encourage, anyone who has the time, to come put in the work and make improvements to do the same. It takes a village.
I personally have put a lot of hours into the Friendship Festival this year alongside all of these volunteers who have. I ran the Youth Pageant so we could actually have one this year and we had an amazing turnout! At the meetings this year, our whole team put the kids first and are trying to offer great new things for the community.
All in all, even with the few negative things, I can say we have had an amazing turnout. 👏 thank you so much for coming and supporting this community event this week! ❤️
Next year, we need to learn from mistakes and implement new procedures, AND SIGNAGE, to help make it better and enjoyable for all. Our next meeting is October 11th at 3pm for anyone thinking they may be interested in joining the board to to help out. We are located at 860 East Oak Street in the Festival Office. The office is at the front side of the merchants building. We have a lot of great ideas, but we need the manpower to be able to pull them off. We started with $24, a small mountain of debt, and a dream this year and we pulled together with the communities help and made it happen.
To the board, I know that we are all exhausted pigeons after this long week, but you did an awesome job on everything else this year! Our parade turned out really nice as well. We can also report that no one was seriously injured this whole week, which is the absolute best outcome.
The more you know: We dont control hours the carnival company runs, or the prices they charge for tickets/wristbands. We also dont control how much vendors charge for food. We all feel the rising cost in our wallets. But did you know we had free activities for the families to come and enjoy with their kids on Saturday? There were families to come and enjoy it, but it could have saw a larger turnout. We had bands Friday and Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. We had a new wrestling event we tried out this year that was Free! The Carnival company was supposed to bring more rides than they did. We didnt get a say in any of that. We are in a 3 year contract with them until after next year. They hire their own staff, we have nothing to do with that either.
Did you know: we are all unpaid volunteers. You dont get paid for 100s of hours you put into this throughout the year. Consider it more of a community service. Without the volunteered time, there is no festival. It takes months of planning and with only a small 16 person crew, its exhausting. When we invite you to join the board, its not to be rude, its to offer you to help out instead of complaining, because without more help, we cant pull this off. With more people we could have committees again and be able to share responsibility instead of the few of us trying to do a little bit of everything in every part of the festival.
Did you know: The city of Canton and The Chamber of Commerce dont govern the Friendship Festival. The Friendship Festival is a sepreate non for profit entity. We ask them for help with things like, blocking off streets for the parade and helping us by having our applications accessible for pick up and drop off. The city also donates a small grant to help with fair expenses. They cant always answer questions for you, as they dont attend our meetings. The best source of information is to ask here directly or call us.
We hear you. We want to make things better. We are already implementing changes to make it even better for next year. As you can see, we already made a change here on our page. 🥰
Thank you all for another great year, if you see a board member out and about, just a few encouraging words or a thank you would make a difference. I appreciate a lot of you who have personally thanked me and it makes me want to work harder to make things better for years to come. 🙏 🙌 ❤️
