Thank you, Volunteers!
You may not have known but last week was National Volunteer Week in Canada. If you are a volunteer hopefully you did know and got to enjoy some treats or at least some big “thank you’s”, like the one we had up in the waiting room.
We are always thankful to our volunteers but it is great to take the opportunity to give a special thanks to the people who freely give their time to support our organization. I recently learned that ISH has had volunteers in one capacity or another since its birth (pardon the pun!) as a Planned Parenthood in 1969. Currently we have over 40 committed and passionate volunteers to celebrate. I feel lucky to get to know a lot of them as we tend to attract some pretty inspiring and motivated individuals who go on to do some pretty great things.
This got me thinking about volunteers in general which led me to this study on volunteering in Canada. Here are my top 5 reasons why Canadian volunteers are awesome:
- The number of volunteers in Canada is growing faster than our population
- More than 8 in 10 Canadians helped others directly (informal volunteering)
- Younger Canadians are more likely to volunteer than older Canadians
- Over 90% of volunteers in Canada do so because they want to contribute to the community
- In Saskatchewan 58% of people over 15 did volunteer work in 2010
Here’s more information on our our awesome volunteers and our current volunteer program.
-Michele (Assistant Educator at ISH)
Source link: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2012001/c-g/11638/c-g06-eng.htm
Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian Survey or Giving, Volunteering and Participating, 2007, 2010
