By Cheryl Jahn

Hart welcomes volunteer help

Oct 11, 2024 | 3:04 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – There’s a small legion of volunteers outside the Hart Pioneer Centre, armed with rakes, shovels, whipper-snippers and a whole lot of determination. They are cleaning out what was once an overgrown garden bed maintained only when a good-hearted volunteer from the centre could scrape together the time.

“We had a bunch of volunteers come out, but three weeks ago we were chainsawing broken branches off that and cleaning up and whipper snipping. But it’s a lot. It’s a lot to do,” says Claus Schlueter, Treasurer for the Hart Pioneer Centre.

Enter, the United Way and a program called “I volunteer.” The United Way acts as the go-between, connecting those in need with those who volunteer their sweat equity.

“Agencies are always welcome to send us their wish list of volunteer activities that things that wouldn’t normally be able to get done due to funding time,” explains Lorna Bihori, Campaign Manager for the United Way of Northern BC. She says the organizations at the receiving end of the volunteer efforts are tremendously grateful.

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“It’s like you go home and you look at your yard and you’re like, I got to rake all these leaves and you know it’s going to take you hours and you think of all these other things that you could be doing instead, right? So it gets put off all the time because of this big project. But what if all your neighbours came together and said, ‘Hey, let’s clean your yard first?'”

And Schlueter is the first to admit places like the Hart Pioneer Centre would not function without the work of volunteers.

“Every day of the week, there’s a volunteer who delivers somewhere around 40, 45, 50 meals to seniors who can’t come here to pick up their meal. We call it Meals on Wheels. It’s a very popular name, but these are volunteers also, only get a free lunch for using their car and their fuel to deliver the meals to these seniors.”

The volunteers at the Centre are with the Kelson Group and, in a statement, the Kelson Group says: “Giving back to our community is at the heart of what we do and it’s thorugh initiatives like these that we can make a meaningful difference to the lives of local seniors.”