Community Corner
Gilroy High School Choir is Festival Volunteer All-Star
Gilroy High School Choir Director Phil Robb shares why volunteering at the festival is important for his crew.
You see them everywhere at the festival. They great you with a smile and help you with any of your festival needs…from parking lot to post-festival cleanup.
They are the Gilroy Garlic Festival volunteers, an all-ages group of community members who help to make the city’s most famous festival happen.
One group that has been there since the late 1980s is the choir.
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It all started with a get-together in 1988. Gilroy High School Choir Director Phil Robb was with some friends and the then co-chair of Gourmet Alley. They were discussing how they needed someone to help out at in the Alley, and that a teacher would be a natural choice since they had a more open schedule during the summer.
Before he knew it, Robb, and the choir, became a Gourmet Alley mainstay.
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“Since then, the role of the choir at the festival has evolved, but the main thing we do is prepare the fish for the cooks. Wash the buckets, rinse the fish and other things,” Robb said.
Volunteer groups are often included in the charitable contributions that the festival returns to the Gilroy community. Over the past ten years, the Gilroy High School choir has raised over 100,000 dollars to go towards their trips, he said.
Last year the Choir was one of the top five beneficiaries of the Gilroy Garlic Festival. They received $11,810.50. The money helped one choir group go to Austria, Bratislava and Hungary, while it helped another choir group go to Southern California.
But it is not all about the money, Robb said.
“They also get a chance to work together without singing. It’s the first activity of the year, and the students get to be part of the community. As they get older, I hope they realize that volunteering is part of being a good human,” Robb said.
Volunteering every year may seem tiring, but to Robb and the choir group, it’s just a “little party.”
“It’s different kids every year, and there are some families that come back to help out. School groups have the privilege of having fresh meat every year. All I have to do is my little sales pitch about the festival,” Robb said.
Robb said aside from volunteering and eating the food, he looks forward to seeing his neighbors. Sometimes it is the only time he gets to see them.
