Volunteering

(last update Sep 2022)

One of the wonderful things about retirement is that you get to do important work without having to worry about whether or not you’re getting paid. We both do a lot of volunteer work – some of it informally, helping friends in complicated situations. Other’s are more traditional volunteering with non-profits. We tend to volunteer in areas aligned with our skills and interests.

Scott is (or has been) volunteer Cook/Chef/Bartender(!) at a number of local Vancouver non-profit societies:

• The Dream Centre – Meals “served with dignity” for east side homeless & downtrodden. My first exposure to volunteering in Vancouver. Wonderful bunch of folks. That was back after my culinary school days (2004-2005). I think the link is for them, glad they’re still around.
• Vancouver Friends for Life Society – Meals and other support for people with life-threatening illnesses in Vancouver’s West End. Since 2013 or 2014. Time flies. We produce brunch/lunch type meals, in the past there were also monthly dinners I did a few of.
• Gordon Neighbourhood House – a nearby community centre, which, among other things, offers an inexpensive lunch for seniors and others in need. I have helped out setting up and tearing down tables for meal service there as well as food prep and cooking (ocassionally substituting for the Chef), but we more recently told that if I was unwilling to wait tables “perhaps I could find another volunteer opportunity”. Sad… I enjoyed the kitchen there.
• Covenant House Vancouver – helping to get youth off the streets. Volunteered in both their kitchens, doing prep in one and service in the other, over a couple of years. They’ve moved into a new facility and I’ve inquired about volunteering there again.
• Central Presbyterian Church — neighbourhood church offering weekly brunch to all takers. This has since closed down (by 2022)
• Vancouver Folk Music Festival – 11 years! In 2022 they eliminated the kitchen; so I did “Vendor support” which was mostly bringing ice to the food vendors. The kitchen had an amazing vibe with nearly 200 volunteers producing up to 5000 meals a day. After about 7 years I switched to breakfasts, “only” 600 of them but it meant getting to the venue at 6am – still in the dark. The last couple of years, Kathy and I spent our volunteer time offsite in a commercial kitchen, banging out breakfast quiches – around 500 of them, in a half day quiche-a-thon. Kathy’s only volume food experience, hard work but we both enjoyed it.
• A Loving Spoonful. A challenging environment, they had a long-standing program doing once-a-month dinners in a First Nations health center. The kitchen was tiny and not the cleanest. After the 2nd year of my involvement, they decided to build a new offsite kitchen. That dragged on for years and as of this writing (about 4 years later), it’s still not open.
• TIHAN. A couple of years with this AIDs-focused charity in Tucson, Arizona (our winter home). When COVID struck, they eliminated the use of volunteers in favor of a kitchen just too far away for me to participate in. Honored, however, that one of the Chef Instructors offered me a paid position on their teaching staff.

And also helps out with his computer & web skills:

• Habitat for Humanity – where he managed their local mailing list for many years
• Heifer International (particularly Heifer Thailand) – where he helped set up their technology infrastructure
• Creating (or updating) websites for non-profits, such as for this daycare center, and also for friends with small businesses

Finally, I’ve branched out beyond my usual “comfort zones”:

• Tourism Vancouver (now “Destination Vancouver) as a “Visitor Experience Specialist” (aka “City Host”) since 2014. Volunteers greet visitors from the cruise ship terminal and at the Visitor Centre (the Visitor Centre is not longer, as of 2020) and various locations around the downtown where tourists visit.
• Vancouver Fringe Festival. Joined “The Fringe” as its known. I volunteered a couple of years before COVID (like everything else, it was postponed for two years), and after TUTS (see below), decided that theatre people are fun and nice to hang out with. Earlier I had just done ticket sales and bar security, this year (2022) I’ll be doing ticket sales, ushering, bar ticket sales, and bar service.
• Theatre Under the Stars. To be honest, I joined TUTS because with changes to Tourism (now “Destination” Vancouver I no longer got free tickets. It turned out to be a great decision; they’re very well run and great to their volunteers. Started mid-season (it’s only a couple of months) so only earned a single pair of tickets, but the nature of the work gave me free time to see most of the “other” show.

Kathy’s volunteer activities often have to do with keeping her brain busy.

• Inexplicably, Kathy enjoys completing complicated tax forms. Our own are bad enough (living in two countries, having a small business, having rental property, etc.), but she now volunteers to do tax returns for others as well (seniors, low-income) as part of an IRS/AARP program called Tax Aide. A couple of days a week Feb-Apr, you’ll find her doing taxes at the Oro Valley library or Sun City senior center.
• A new volunteer gig, related to her consulting career, is acting as a mediator in small-claims court and in civil/equal rights cases. This is a program coordinated by the Attorney General of Arizona, which also provided the training.
• Her background in Mathematics (oh those many years ago) led her as a stint as a facilitator at a course on Probability for a life-long learning program associated with the University of Arizona.
• Her background in scenario-based planning was the basis for her involvement in a large pro bono projects on the Future of the Adirondack Park.
• For a couple of years, she acted as president/treasurer of our homeowner’s association, including running a $1m re-roofing project. This is an experience one should have once (and only once).
• Author! Author! Well, “typesetter”. Kathy recently (2019) typeset an autobiography for a Vancouver friend. It was a couple hundred pages with countless images that required her meticulous skills. Later she was instrumental in creating another book by the same pair.