Long live the volunteer!

Having just enjoyed the Apple Blossom Festival and looking forward to revelling on Canada Day with the community of Burlington (just over the North Mountain from Berwick), I was curious about just how much volunteers actually do around here.

One source of information is the 2004 Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating*, which you can read on-line for free, or purchase from Statistics Canada. The statistics are fascinating: in Nova Scotia, some 48 per cent of us volunteer, averaging 200 hours per volunteer during 2004. That’s a whopping five work weeks!

What moves volunteers to do it? To make a contribution to their community, to make use of skills and experiences, and being affected by the cause supported by the organization. Consider this gift of work to the community is given at the volunteers’ free will. It includes the hours served by community sports groups, churches, service clubs, youth groups – and the list goes on!

Can we ever thank them enough? Some are motivated to do this work in secret, a kind of let-not-your-right-hand-see-what-your-left-hand-is-doing secret, and it might be against their inclination for us to make a fuss, but I believe it is excellent exercise for the improvement of our attitudes to seek out and recognize examples of such generosity. There are always those who slip by us, like the volunteers who make sure the centre block of Kentville is neat and tidy the morning after the Apple Blossom Parade. They work just after sunrise and few of the rest of us notice them doing it, but everyone who went through Sunday benefitted from their work.

My friend, Dottie, has made it her mission in life to make sure “no volunteer works un-thanked.”

Dottie, the Tennessee Volunteer, she calls herself, saying, “Why, Tennessee is known world-wide as the Volunteer State, and I surely know a thing or two ‘bout volunteerin’!”

Surely, she does, but it doesn’t end there. Her favourite affirmation is, “The only thing more satisfyin’ to the soul than singin’ is helpin’ other folks out.”

A local reviewer has reported this of her performance: “This teller of homespun homilies has her metaphors mixed: Her over-processed Barbie doll hairdo is at odds with her Bucksnort, Tennessee mind-set. By far the largest disappointment of the evening was the quality of her voice. Possibly likening it to that of Minnie Pearl would be the kindest report to make. Dottie should do us all a favor and stop assaulting audiences with her songs. Perhaps she’d have better success leading a campfire singsong.”

Dottie’s reply? “Mostly where I perform, there in’t no campfire, but I’m open to new ideas. Life don’t stand around in heaps waitin’ on folks to pick it up. My mama always did say life is a movin’ thing, ya gotta git goin’ an’ ketch it! So, Lord willin’ and sweet Jesus tarryin’, I think we’ll give that a try! I do love havin’ y’all sing with me. * http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/Reports.asp http://www.volunteer.ca