Corcoran Community Fund

In 2023, Corcoran Country Daze, a kid-friendly, two-day outdoor festival that brings members of the community together for great food, music & activities including an antique car & tractor show, a free kids' day, fireworks & fun. The event is run solely by volunteers from the community & is led by the Chair of the Corcoran Community Fund. The event was started as a way to create civic pride & bring Corcoran together, as the city covers 53 square miles but only has a population of approximately 8,000. The free kids' day is the cornerstone of our weekend with over 3,000 people visiting us on Saturday to spend the day with their kids. We offer educational activities for kids, as well as other activities, to let all kids play without concerns about costs. Examples of this include: a music school which brings instruments for kids to play & discover music; a karate school that does demonstrations & teaches kids basic moves; kid's bingo, which uses shapes & colors instead of numbers so all ages can play & practice their identification skills; & local handymen/construction trade members join us to help kids build birdhouses or feeders. This year, we added Touch A Truck to our kid's day event that focused significantly on farming as our area is still heavily agricultural. We even brought down a combine for the kids to see, climb around & get a chance to speak with our local farmers. One of our favorite parts of kids day is our school backpack giveaway. We packed the backpacks with school supplies including: markers, pencils, colored pencils, erasers, glue & glue sticks, a pencil box, folders & a notebook. We gave away 900 bags at no cost to any child that needed one. Our goal is to help all children in our community start the school year off not worrying about having the necessary supplies for their success in the classrooms. There were 10 local businesses & organizations that had booths, providing information about their business this year during kids day as well as 10 local artisans that were selling their crafts & cottage foods. Additionally, our concerts, which help allow us to put on our kids' day event at no cost, saw over 3,000 people in attendance during the two days of music.