City to Honor BP Volunteers for National Volunteer Week

In honor of National Volunteer Week, Bainbridge Prepares, the City of Bainbridge Island, and the Bainbridge Island Fire Department are honoring local volunteers, many of whom have made possible our community's rapid response to COVID. To honor the hundreds of volunteers and their thousands of hours, tomorrow night the Bainbridge Island City Council will be proclaiming this week National Volunteer Week on Bainbridge. And Bainbridge Prepares staff created a celebratory slideshow.The rapid response to COVID staffed by volunteers has included setting up a drive-through testing site that operated for months outside City Hall, holding mask-fitting clinics to make sure first responders are protected, procuring needed personal protective equipment and other key resources for local organizations and businesses, and running a highly successful COVID-19 clinic that operated out of the Senior Center, Woodward Middle School, Commodore Options School, and Chimacum, administering vaccines to people from around the region.That vaccine clinic has been so successful that this past weekend volunteers administered their 20,000th dose.In an email to volunteers, Anne LeSage, the City's Emergency Management Coordinator, wrote, "If we did not have your support, we would not have been able to stand up our own COVID-19 test site nor would we have been able to support COVID-19 vaccination clinics on Bainbridge, and in both Kitsap and Jefferson Counties."Join in the celebration by leaving your comments for Bainbridge Prepares volunteers below.