LiveWorkPlay Celebrates National Volunteer Week 2019
National Volunteer Week starts April 7, and celebrates Canada’s 13 million volunteers! At LiveWorkPlay
we could not do what we do without our volunteer team, now 150 people strong!
This year’s Volunteer Week them is “The Volunteer Factor – Lifting Communities.” We can think of no better example of this than the impact our volunteer team has in supporting our Friday meet-ups!
Did you know that our Friday night meet-ups support an average of about 8 different social gatherings every week? That’s over 400 every year! These gatherings bring together people with and without disabilities who share mutual interests in movies, sports, dining out…the possibilities are endless.
And of course people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism are themselves important contributors as community volunteers, and are involved with many of our partner organizations like Meals on Wheels, Parkdale Food Centre, Perley Rideau veteran’s centre, and Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre to name just a few.
The beautiful image (see below) of the hot air balloons of different sizes, shapes and colours reflects the diversity of community volunteers. It illustrates that when people volunteer together, the sky is the limit, in terms of what they can achieve.
At our March 29 Celebration of Inclusion Family Feast (see photo above) we had the opportunity for recognition of some individual volunteers with the presentation of the Ottawa South Volunteer Awards with the help of the office of MP David McGuinty. Congratulations to:
- Bruce Summers
- Emily Rice
- Emily Phan
- Laurie Hogan
- Michelle O’Doherty
- Kim Francoeur
- Kevin Hertz
Thank you to all of our volunteers, and to all those who volunteer in organizations and communities across Canada and the world!