Training for CWC 2007 Volunteers to Begin December

Training of volunteers selected for the ICC Cricket World Cup (CWC) West Indies 2007 will commence by December. Manager of the Volunteer Programme, Vilma McDonald, told JIS News that training would proceed after 1,923 applications of potential volunteers underwent security screening by the ICC. “I know that we will not have many rejects in that area,” she said.
Following this screening process, a clean list of volunteers will be returned to the Jamaica Local Organising Committee (LOC), of which 1,200 persons will be selected and contacted to commence training.”I know that some persons will be disappointed because they were not selected. However, we cannot select everyone,” Mrs. McDonald said.
Nevertheless, she pointed out that the legacy of the programme would be that the list of all applicants would be handed over to the National Registry of Volunteers (NRV) after the event.
“This is good, in that for future events, the NRV will not have to be scrambling like we did for this event. They will reap the benefits of a pool of experienced and well trained volunteers,” she pointed out.
Commenting on the areas receiving the most interest from applicants, the Manager said the first choice was to be VIP assistants. “This is an area where we are not going to need a quarter of those who requested it,” she said.
Other popular areas among the applicants included, ‘Meet and Greet’ and ‘Hospitality’.
“I think the perception is that we are going to have all these visitors, so persons will need to be nice, polite and courteous, so those are the areas where applicants feel they will be most needed,” she offered as reason for the popular choices.
The area receiving the least interest in terms of choice was transportation, where some 94 persons will be needed to oversee park and ride areas, among other activities.
“We will have to look at first, second, third and fourth choices right down the list, because if we are short in one area, we will have to pull from another area,” she informed. “I need everybody to understand that they might not get the choice they requested,” she added.
The area requiring the most volunteers is that of ushers, for which 260 volunteers are needed for both venues.