A community is made stronger through volunteering, and the Ames Main Street Cultural District is a prime example of this — there have been more than 30,000 volunteer hours reached there this year.

“Volunteering gives a person that great sense of satisfaction because it really is a selfless act,” said Andrea Gronau, manager of Worldly Goods. “We are very lucky to be in a district that is vibrant like ours.”

In addition to managing the Worldly Goods store within the district, which is supported by volunteers, Gronau has been volunteering for different events within the community for almost 10 years. 

She and many others have contributed countless hours of dedication in making the mission of the Ames Main Street Cultural District possible.

The mission is to advance and promote downtown as the destination district in the heart of the Ames community, according to the Main Street Cultural District website.

The district attracts numerous visitors every year and is considered the heart of Ames, bringing people together to attend an event with family or go out for shopping, drinks and food with friends.

“There’s so much to do in downtown Ames,” said Cynthia Hicks, Main Street Cultural District’s executive director. “There are unique fun restaurants. We even have a state-of-the-art library. People want to come down here.”

Different events that take place throughout the year are some of the main attractions of the district, including Oktoberfest in the fall, Snow Magic near Christmastime and the annual June Art Walk, which showcases artists in the community. 

With these events comes a large amount of effort and planning, and it would not be possible for them to take place without generous volunteering from members of the community. 

“All of these events will need around 40 volunteers. To put the event on, it takes a lot of people to actually do the work. Then we usually have a committee of volunteers working on planning each event for several months beforehand. We had 500 volunteer hours put in last year, if we had to pay these people we could not put on all of the events,” Hicks said. 

Signing up to volunteer on the www.amesdowntown.org website is easy — and thankfully, the tightly bound Ames community has stepped up to the plate every year, according to Hicks, who mentioned the names of many individuals who contribute and volunteer almost every single day. 

“We put out the call and people answer, people want to help out and make the community better, Ames is really good about that,” Hicks said. 

The fact that people are happy to step up to support each other in order to make a beautiful downtown is something that both Hicks and Gronau made sure to stress. 

“We support each other. There is such a great culture and camaraderie. It all comes together to make a great downtown. Whether it’s that person picking up garbage or a lot of people working together to make a big event a success,” Gronau said.