Philanthropy’s been Volken’s hardest gig
Labour of love: Making money was ‘fairly easy’ compared to helping addicts and orphans recover
At 73, John Volken readily admits that he has never worked harder, which is extraordinary considering what he’s done with his life.
Volken arrived in Canada from East Germany at 18 with $20 in his pocket. A decade ago, he sold his 150-store United Furniture Warehouse chain, which had annual sales of more than $200 million, and cashed in his West Vancouver house.
These days, the $80-million, 3.5-hectare John Volken Academy is his labour of love.
He’s so passionate about it that he and his wife Chawna live in a small apartment above the academy’s giant grocery, furniture and clothing store PricePro. Early every morning, he walks through the store and across the parking lot to join the academy’s students — recovering addicts — for breakfast.
From early morning until evening, Volken is on the move, checking on the students at Western Canada’s largest therapeutic community — people who will spend a minimum of two years living, learning and healing there.
“Making money was fun because it was fairly easy,” he says. “But (the academy) is much more rewarding and I’m working harder at this than I have at anything else.”
When it’s fully operational, the Surrey academy will be home to 150 students aged 19 to 32. Their only cost is a $5,000 intake fee. All of their other expenses — food, housing, education, skills training and treatment — are covered by the John Volken Foundation.
The academy is privately funded and secular. Over time, the plan is to add a university-- affiliated addictions recovery research centre.
Volken’s journey from businessman to philanthropist began after he was named Canada’s Pacific region entrepreneur of the year in 1995. He asked himself, what now? — and the answer was to change the lives of others.
Initially, he thought he’d feed the poor. His research took him to the streets of the Downtown Eastside, where he spent many nights handing out sandwiches.
What he found was plenty of food. In short supply then and now is addictions treatment.
“As I investigated more, I came to the realization that people go to detox and come out,” Volken says. “They’re in and out all the time because they go to detox and once they’re clean, they’re told to get a life. But they don’t know how to get a life.”
His search for the right model took him across North America and Europe, including San Patrignano in Italy. He settled on the therapeutic community model because of its success rates. He started small, establishing Welcome Home in Surrey, Seattle and Phoenix, which each accommodated 30 or fewer people. Renamed the John Volken Academy, the campus in Surrey opened late last year and was officially opened last week.
But Volken’s philanthropy extends beyond North America to Africa.
“I was part of a board for another charity (in the late 1990s),” he says, “and was at a worldwide meeting. Sitting next to me was this guy from Africa, who turned out to be the foreign minister of Kenya. He said you’ve got to come. So, I went … and if you leave those areas without being touched, you’re not human.”
There are an estimated 52 million orphans in Africa — eight million in Kenya alone. And while Volken has no personal experience with addictions, he has with orphanages.
Volken’s father, a medical doctor, died near the end of the Second World War. His widowed mother couldn’t support threeyear-old John and his two brothers, so the boys spent a year in an orphanage.
It quickly became apparent that building orphanages in Africa is incredibly complicated. Corruption was only one of myriad problems. So instead, Volken founded Lift the Children. Its primary goal — like the academy’s — is to bolster residents’ ability to be independent.
“We want them to grow up to have jobs, homes and families,” Volken says.
Lift the Children now supports close to 14,000 children in 67 orphanages in Kenya, three in Uganda, and one each in Liberia and Mozambique. More will be added soon. Last week at a gala that featured Deepak Chopra (who also spoke at the academy’s official opening) and attracted other local philanthropists, including Abdul Ladha, Frank Giustra and the Aquilinis, the charity raised $481,000.
All of that goes to caring for, feeding, housing and educating the children. Staff salaries at the orphanages as well as administrative costs are all covered by Volken’s foundation.
“I believe in God. I feel privileged to do these taxing, long days,” he says.
Last year, the Dalai Lama presented Volken — a Mormon — with a humanitarian award.
And, when I asked him why he feels compelled to do so much for others, Volken quoted Mother Teresa: “God doesn’t require you to succeed, He only requires that you try.”