Whenever I read in the news that Canadians are volunteering less every year, I grumble at the screen because I know exactly why. Having volunteered on and off and attempted different volunteering opportunities for more than two decades now, I’ve become something of a volunteer onboarding expert and worst-practices detector.
Please don’t mistake me for a particularly good or altruistic person: if you immigrate to Canada as a young adult on your own, as I did, expect the integration to Canadian society to be a lifelong stop-and-restart project, and that is what I’ve been doing. We volunteer to share our skills as much as to belong somewhere, find our people.
