{"id":7996,"date":"2010-01-27T08:43:14","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T13:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/?p=7996"},"modified":"2010-01-27T08:43:14","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T13:43:14","slug":"festival-honours-backbone-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/27\/festival-honours-backbone-of-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Festival honours &#8216;backbone&#8217; of success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.niagarafallsreview.ca\/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2278803\">Niagara Falls Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Shawn Fleckney says he was &#8220;just a kid&#8221; when he started volunteering as a mascot with the Winter Festival of Lights.<\/p>\n<p>More than 20 years later, he&#8217;s still at it. He says he can&#8217;t think of a better way to spend his leisure time than by making new friends, learning skills and giving back to his community.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everyone here is just like part of my family,&#8221; said Fleckney, 33, who was presented with the Rick Stokes Award at a dinner Friday night at Club Italia to honour all those who have helped the organization.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m in shock. I certainly wasn&#8217;t expecting this,&#8221; he said, minutes after picking up his award.<\/p>\n<p>The Rick Stokes Award is given to the one exceptional volunteer who goes way beyond the call of duty. Fleckney put in 183 hours of volunteer work last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Niagara Falls Review: Shawn Fleckney says he was &#8220;just a kid&#8221; when he started volunteering as a mascot with the Winter Festival of Lights. More than 20 years later, he&#8217;s still at it. He says he can&#8217;t think of a better way to spend his leisure time than by making new friends, learning&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,2,503],"tags":[2874,47,2875,2872,2873,46,44],"class_list":["post-7996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niagara-falls-events","category-niagara-falls-news","category-niagara-falls-winter-festival-of-lights","tag-club-italia","tag-festival-of-lights","tag-mascot","tag-rick-stokes","tag-volunteer-work","tag-wfol","tag-winter-festival-of-lights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7997,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7996\/revisions\/7997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}