BUCKHANNON – A Buckhannon-Upshur High School marketing campaign to help local fire departments recruit more volunteers launches next week.
Dr. Justin Bowers, career tech business and marketing teacher at B-UHS, said he was proud of his class and seeing their work in action.
“The final product is the entire marketing campaign — the banners, the posters, and really the whole idea of this slogan — inviting community members to consider being a part of and helping the fire department,” Bowers said. “The students did a phenomenal job, designed everything from the idea behind the campaign to the actual graphic design of it.”
The project features banners, posters, T-shirts and rack cards that will be featured in the Firemen’s Parade next Friday, May 20.
“There’s about 20 students in the class, and they all submitted ideas, they all came up with their own designs, and then we had a competition throughout the class to see which ones they really liked,” Bowers said. “We submitted those to the chief and his team, and they narrowed it down, and that’s where we came up with the designs everybody is going to see.”
Buckhannon Fire Chief JB Kimble said he was happy to see the project come alive and see interest from students from B-UHS.
“Throughout the whole process, this marketing event with the high school has been very joyful; everybody put a lot of effort into it. The designs they came up with were top-notch and I love the interaction with the kids,” Kimble said. “They’re thrilled about being able to interact more by joining us in our parade to try to help recruit people, and I think that’s the interaction we need in the fire service, to gain a couple of younger people that want to be firefighters.”
He said people don’t realize how hard it is to find volunteers.
“A lot of people in our community don’t realize how low volunteerism is, not necessarily all in the fire service, it’s in the Lions Club, it’s an all the organizations that rely on volunteers, so hopefully will help encourage more volunteers,” Kimble said.
More information about the marketing project can be found in a previous My Buckhannon article here.
