Prince George, B.C. – The effort to recruit volunteers for the 2015 Canada Winter Games will be front and centre at the Pine Centre Mall this weekend.

Alyson Gourley-Cramer, Manager  of Communications and Community Relations for the Games, says more than 3,000 people in Prince George have signed up already to  volunteer. “We are just over the 3,000 mark,  and because its National Volunteer Week, we thought we would kick off another campaign just to get the word out and   get some information out about our new registration system.”

The new system will allow those who have already signed up, or are now in the process of signing up, to select the area of the Games they would like to volunteer.

The Games will require about 4500 volunteers and 10% of that number are to be bilingual.  Gourley-Cramer says finding bilingual volunteers has not been a challenge “We’re doing really well in that area too.  We’ve got about 300 bilingual volunteers, so we are at the 10% mark now.”

The volunteer booth at the Pine Centre Mall will have people on hand to answer questions about the roles available during Games’ time, and people can sign up on the spot.

Volunteering for the Games is not restricted to those who live in Prince George.  Those who live outside of the city will soon  be  offered  an opportunity to volunteer.  That program will be announced in May. “So if there are people outside of Prince George who have been waiting to get involved, we will have something for them in the next month or so” says Gourley-Cramer.

The volunteer recruitment in Prince George is ahead of the numbers recruited at this time in other Host communities “We’re thrilled at where we are in the process, we weren’t surprised, we knew that Prince George would come out and be supportive of this event.”

The Canada Winter Games booth will be on location at the Pine Centre mall this evening and all day tomorrow.