08/11/09

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Every second Sunday in September, an impressive flower parade is held in Lichtenvoorde, a tradition for 75 years. Neighbourhoods, families and clubs joins forces and invest a lot of time to make this grand spectacle possible. At this moment you are a guest of one of the parade groups, namely “Group Marneth”.

For Lichtenvoorde and its population, the flower parade is a very important social and cultural event:

Flower parade can look back on an impressive parade.

Sunday afternoon at 2.00 PM, a colourful and dazzling parade left from the exhibition ground over a route, edged with more than 60.000 visitors. The present sun made the spectacle even more beautiful and impressive. The 21 big floats and the 40 youth floats were again of a very high quality. The show bands that framed the floats made that Lichtenvoorde was a swinging town for 2 hours.

The impact that the flower parade has on Lichtenvoorde, we would like to try to explain on the basis of some statistics.

• The board of the organising foundation and the flower committee are active the whole year with about 50 people.
• With 21 participating large floats are, during the building season, about 50 people involved in building the float and working on the dahlia field. During the parade weekend, for 2 days and nights, about 150 people help sticking the flowers on the float. In total thus 200 people, times 21 floats, is 4200 in total.
• With the 40 participating smaller floats are, during the building season, about 10 people involved in building or other services. During the parade weekend there are about 25 people that help sticking the flowers on the float. Thus, in total that is 35 people, times 40 floats, is 1400 in total.
• The occupants and employees of the home for the elderly ‘Antoniushove’, together with the day-care clients, help massively with ‘bottom pinching’. The smoothing of the bottom of the flower to be able to fix these to the figures. Over 200 people are involved in this.
• Several community services and the town council is, with approximately 50 people, involved.

All together there are around 5.900 people actively involved. Assuming that the average family size is 3, Lichtenvoorde counts 3.500 families. Accordingly on an average in every family more than half of the members are actively involved in the parade. It is reasonable to believe that in at least half of the families 1 other family member is passively involved, because of baby-sitting or other kind of services. So that makes 7.500 members of the community of Lichtenvoorde. One part of the remaining 2.500 people is currently still too young, but will definitely help in the future. The other part has currently other engagements or is sick, but did always help in the past.

 

 

Jury