Parade Guides at Barricades

Beginning with the 2023 Rose Festival, Portland NET and the Portland Rose Festival are working together to keep Portland's most prominent celebration safe by recruiting volunteers as Parade Guides. Parade Guides monitor vehicular traffic at barricades and serve as a general information source for paradegoers. This is a planned event deployment NET/PBEM reserves exclusively for the Rose Festival; NET does not deploy for Parade Guide responsibilities for any other event.

This article serves as a general job aid and volunteer position description for volunteers (both NET and non-NET) serving as Parade Guides.

Background

Volunteer Guides deploy to each of the Rose Festival's parades: the Starlight Parade, the Junior Parade, and the Grand Floral Parade. Each Parade Guide will receive via email an operations plan that will include relevant contact information, check-in locations, radio frequencies, and other details specific to each event. Event-specific information is NOT included in this article; if a Volunteer Guide has not received their operations plan a week before the event, they should email net@portlandoregon.gov.

Mission

Volunteer Guides help keep Portland Rose Festival events safe and fun by actively managing street closure barricades. Volunteers will help act as the "eyes and ears" around the parade route and work with our on-site safety team to report any incidents. Responsibilities include:

• Ensure the safety of parade participants and guests by actively managing street closure barricades

• Greet people and welcome them to the parade
• Assist parade participants through entry & exit areas
• Report incidents to the safety team on site
• Guide community members in wayfinding around the parade area

We encourage NET volunteers to treat this as a tactical radio comms exercise as well, and to bring an FRS/GMRS radio. Radio frequencies will be included in the event operations plan.