Volunteering courageously: A young leader’s story

The blog post below was written by Lilia Zaharevia, a local youth superstar. She has been making waves in the community, using her courage, relationships and intelligence to put her insights about community needs into action. What a gift! I interviewed Lilia over email and she provided us with the following responses – complete with pearls of wisdom for anyone interested in being the change one wishes to see. You can find the InsideOUT website here and find them on twitter at @insideout_group 

My name is Lilia Zaharieva, I was born halfway across the world in Sofia Bulgaria …

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The Spirit of Giving

Once again, it is the time of year when we start to receive larger volumes of calls from individuals and groups looking to volunteer over the Christmas period.

Christmas is, after all, a time when we focus more attention on helping others and giving back.  So it might seem hard to believe that volunteer positions are sometimes not as plentiful during this time of year.

We are so fortunate to live in a community that understands that volunteers are needed all year round. And it is because of this, the need to serve the homeless, pack food hampers and so much more, is often …

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The Criminal Records Review Program-Part 1

By now most agencies know that starting a year ago changes were made to the BC Criminal Records Review Act. The Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General’s Criminal Records Review Program (CRRP) has expanded their existing program that protects children from physical and sexual abuse to also help protect “vulnerable adults” from physical, sexual and financial abuse.

This is part one of a two part blog entry that will hopefully help to clarify the changes that have been made. We are dealing with policies from different areas of government. Some of this information is not in unison and quite challenging …

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A Web of Options

 This article first appeared in Volunteer Victoria’s E-Link newsletter on October 21st, 2011. Sign up for E-Link and keep current with news and information from Volunteer Victoria.

Volunteer Victoria recently had to face a difficult truth. We have been lying to ourselves about how happy we are with our website.

In fairness to old faithful, our website has served us well, behaved admirably, and cost very little in the big scheme of things. But, (and isn’t there always a but) our website isn’t keeping up with the needs of our members, volunteers, and client groups. So, it is time to look at new …

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Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) Kicks Off Another Successful Year!

The following is a guest post written by our new ELN Social Mavens, Yasmin Rampuri and Liz Hallett. Thank you Liz and Yasmin for hosting this very successful Fall Mingle, and for stepping up and sharing your skills and enthusiasm. It was a great event!

Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) Fall Mingle

After enjoying the lovely summer weather when it finally happened, the ELN ushered in the new season with a bang at the Fall Mingle.

The event hovered at full from days after it was posted, until the day of the event on September 15th, and we had 29 enthusiastic networkers attend in the end.

Veneto Café provided a …

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