News & Stories

“I cannot alone change the world, but I can cast a stone to make many ripples.”

Sometimes it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all of the things in this world that seem to need fixing. Passionate people want to change the world, but how on earth do they decide how and where to start? Boys & Girls Clubs Big Brothers Big Sisters is proud to have 3,000 caring individuals who have decided to start something with us. On the surface spending an hour a week with a child in a Club, a school, or in the community might not seem like a big deal. Maybe spending time helping our staff with filing or coming out to events  doesn’t feel like it has a big impact. But every hour invested in our community’s kids, directly or indirectly, has an incredible impact.

Volunteers:

• Support our staff in admin tasks such as filing, photocopying, putting together volunteer training packages, and so much more. The quicker we can get through those bits of work, the more time we can spend on our kids and their families.
• Enable our agency to fundraise by spending their time selling 50-50 tickets at Oilers games, working Casino shifts, and spending their days at our Golf and Lobster Lovers fundraisers (to name just a few).
• Spend a hour with a child, in their community, at their work, or in a school making them feel special and supported.
• Spend their week nights in one of our 10 Clubs, helping kids with homework, engaging them in important programming and building relationships.
• Come into our Clubs as part of Days of Caring and do something special for our kids that day, from playing games to making them cookies.
• Give parents peace of mind knowing that someone else truly cares about their child and wants to help them succeed.

Since today is the start of National Volunteer Week, we wanted to send out a gigantic THANK YOU to our caring, talented, humble, devoted volunteers.

Our friends at Volunteer Alberta created this video about the importance of volunteers in creating vibrant communities. We want to share this with you today, so that you know just how important our volunteers are, not just to the individual people they see in their volunteer work, but to our community as a whole. Volunteers create ripples of positive impact in our community and we are so incredibly grateful for their dedication and passion for making our communities better places to call home.

 

So this week, let’s tell these stories! We’ll be sharing stories and quotes from our families, volunteers, and staff on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram about how volunteering creates ripples in our communities. Join us by using #NVW2016, #yegvolunteers, or #welovevolunteers and tell us about a highlight moment you’ve had as a volunteer, how a volunteer has impacted your life or you community, or simply why you believe volunteers matter. Tag us with @bgcbigs. Together, let’s make sure that the world knows volunteering is the foundation of our community!