Volunteering

A WIN-WIN EXPERIENCE

I

CAN’T REMEMBER exactly when I first started volunteering, although it was many, many years ago. And it probably wasn’t that I stepped forward, but more likely that I was given a little push from behind. Thanks, ma! In those early days, volunteering was often rewarded with a less than welcome buxom hug and occasionally sweets or maybe even a few pennies. Well, two out of three ain’t bad!

Later in life, I learned that volunteering wasn’t always about stepping or being pushed forward but rather standing one’s ground when everyone else took a step back. It’s about seeing a need, a hole as it were, in the fabric of my community, and asking myself what can “I” do to help to address that need and mend that hole.

At Goward House, volunteering opportunities abound, and needs are met and holes in our social fabric are mended. Like a coin, volunteering has two sides – but that’s where the similarity ends. The coin toss mantra: ‘heads you win, tails you lose’ doesn’t apply to volunteering where the ‘win’ is on both sides of the coin.

While most of the activities and programs at Goward House are geared to the needs and interests of its’ members, there is an occasional outreach to the community. One volunteer activity in particular, close to the heart of this writer, was the collaboration between aspiring young artists and members from each of the Goward House art groups – the Drop-In Painters, Chinese Brush Painters and Portrait Painters.

For a number of years, Goward House has invited young artists from neighbouring schools to make submissions for an annual showing of their work at Goward House. On opening day of the exhibition, the senior artists not only welcomed the exhibitors, their families, friends and teachers, but also offered encouragement, advice and participated in ‘hands-on’ exchanges of talent and skill with the students while they participated in art-related activities.

Over the years, we seniors shared our time, talents and joy of art with a potential new generation of Batemans, Carrs and Lansdownes, and we are all the richer for it. The immediate payback for me is the smile of satisfaction and accomplishment on a young face, and the look of wonderment of a proud parent as a new creation prepares to take a place of honour on the fridge door or office wall.

Subsequent classroom visits to Goward House to observe the resident senior artists in action have livened up the rooms and halls and brought joy to this volunteer. Volunteering – the gift of self and a life-long opportunity that money can’t buy.

Goward House Society is a non-profit organization that operates as an adult activity centre for those aged 50+.