Members of the Colesville community gathered at Good Hope Park for its annual Strawberry Festival on Saturday, May 17. For the past two years there was no festival due to the lack of time and volunteers. This year, the Colesville community decided it was time to restart the tradition.

“I was there since the first Strawberry Festival. The purpose of the festival was to have a community party and to come together as a family,” former chairperson of the Strawberry Festival Rosina Mason said. “We have been debating whether or not to continue the festival for years, but we believe it is important to have a sense of community.”

According to Mason, there was an increase in the number of volunteers this year, specifically due to the students of Springbrook High School.

In the beginning of the year, Springbrook’s National Honor Society (NHS) was recruited to help with the festival.

“I chose to be the Springbrook spokesperson for the festival around November. I was in charge of finding volunteers, but not enough NHS members wanted to help, ” junior Ruth Dereje said.

In order to find more volunteers, Dereje reached out to underclassmen and seniors in need of Student Service Learning (SSL) hours.

“My sister is a sophomore so I asked her to tell her teachers to talk about the festival because students get SSL hours for helping out. A lot of sophomores decided to help out at the festival.” Dereje explained. “I also talked to seniors who needed 10 hours or less to graduate.”

Some students did not expect volunteering at the festival to be as tiring as it was.

“I was selling strawberries at the festival and it was really busy. We were out of strawberries by noon. I didn’t think that people would actually buy the strawberries,” junior Asma Shah stated.

The strawberries being sold at the festival were not locally grown strawberries like they had been in past years.

“It was disappointing to know that those strawberries were no different than ones you could buy in the grocery store,” Colesville community member Martha Smith said.

According to the board members of the Strawberry festival, the harsh winter affected the strawberry crop. Because of this, strawberries were bought from a store instead.

Despite the absence of locally grown strawberries, the festival was deemed a success.

“There were a lot of people that came out. There were so many volunteers and the entertainment was fabulous. I hope next year’s festival is just as successful,” Colesville community member Carol Jones said.

There are currently no plans for Springbrook’s NHS to volunteer at next year’s festival.

“I’m not sure if NHS is doing anything for the festival next year, but it was great to help this year and I wouldn’t mind doing it next year too,” Dereje said.