Building Community

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I came to volunteering late in life. I looked into volunteering with this very organization and relatively quickly dismissed it because there seemed to be a lot of hoops you had to jump through. I didn't get why I couldn't just come in and help, didn't they need help? Yes, we do. You might even say "boy, do we!" But we need the help we need, which is not always the help people are able to offer, so we try and provide a realistic picture of what volunteering with us is like and sometimes that involves some hoops.  People quickly learn that volunteering in an animal shelter may not be as easy or as glamorous as they originally thought, after all it's not just about cuddling puppies. So once the initial enthusiasm wears off, what keeps them coming back?

Like many non-profit organizations, we are extremely fortunate to have great support from our larger community. Our volunteers come from Cochrane, Calgary and surrounding areas, from a variety of backgrounds, and the only thing most have in common is a desire to make a difference in the lives of homeless animals. And they do. Our volunteers make a huge difference in the lives of our residents, sometimes all the difference. For some individuals, a by-product of volunteering can be a sense of belonging that we often don't even realize we were missing. Friendships between volunteers are built based on common values and a shared purpose. That stranger that you met a month ago becomes a friend, and through shared experience you become part of something bigger, you become part of a community. That's what keeps volunteers coming back.

One of the best part of my jobs is witnessing the relationships built between people who would probably never have met if it wasn't for their volunteer service. I often forget that not everyone knows each other because our volunteer program feels like family to me. We all inhabit this same hectic space and do the same tasks, just on different days and times. On those instances when volunteers are thrown together outside of their regular duties you see the value of building community. They don't know each other, but they are not strangers because they have a shared experience; they know the same animals, they do the same tasks. It's like starting a puzzle with the edges already in place.

Community is defined as a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. Our volunteers make a choice to be part of our community, a community that not only includes people, but also dogs, cats, bunnies, birds, the occasional guinea pig and currently a hedgehog and a chinchilla. Our community is almost certainly duplicated in many other organizations where volunteers donate their efforts to a common cause, but I think ours is special. Come join us and see for yourself!