As we near this weekend’s annual community event, the 2013 installment of the Race on the Base, one word emphasizes the importance of such an event, ‘community’. How can one simple word be so important to an event’s success and its sustainment for years to come? Well, as the adage goes, it takes a village and in this case, community engagement, involvement, participation.
Of course the paid sponsors of the Race on the Base and the various vendors who will be showcasing their goods and services at the pre and post-race expo will be looking at foot traffic numbers and sales figures, calculating their ROI to justify the expense and determine their continued involvement. And the Los Alamitos Recreation Department certainly has a vested interest in attendance figures as they hope for greater sponsorship dollars in order to ensure this event continues. But do attendance figures and sponsorship dollars actually build true equity in a community event? Or does its relevancy to a community determine this event’s true equity? And if so, how is that relevancy safeguarded and nurtured for years to come? It’s done so by actual participation by its community members.
Merely supporting a community event through sponsorship dollars isn’t enough. Walking the expo floor and buying a bag of popcorn isn’t enough. Taking a few pictures and covering it for news reporting purposes simply isn’t enough. That’s not support of an event in its totality. True support comes from an unwritten level of engagement by its residents and neighboring communities, rolling up their sleeves and doing some of the heavy lifting. It’s participation, involution. It takes a village. It’s something expected, yet unspoken and found in the provinciality of a community. Councilman Troy Edgar understood this and competed in last year’s 5K event.
This is precisely why the News Enterprise is not only lending its support by taking on the task of publishing the official event program for the Race on the Base, but has assembled a team to compete in this year’s event. This Saturday, you’ll find two staff members out on the course giving it their all through 3.1 miles, anchored by yours truly in the 10K. Afterall, embracing this event through the spirit of competition regardless of how you finish is a thing worth doing not because of individual glory or accomplishment, but the sense of fulfillment bestowed upon us as a community. Just saying.
In this week’s News Enterprise and Sun Newspapers, you’ll find the official event program for the 32nd annual Race on the Base. For a preview of this year’s individual events and information prior to the race, please refer to this special section.
For those of you who’ve remained “in the know” by acquiring your community based news and information on a weekly basis, we thank you for your continued readership of the News Enterprise and our news site, www.newsenterprise.net.
As always, feel free to forward your comments, observations, and suggestions to us anytime. Email me directly at: publisher@newsenterprise.net.
See you on the course.