If someone had told me a year ago that I would be helping to save the lives of Canadians on a daily basis, I would have never believed them. Yet, here I am a year later, and that is exactly what I do.

Three months ago, I became the Vancouver Island Volunteer Resources Coordinator at Canadian Blood Services. I am responsible for recruiting and training new volunteers, as well as managing the nearly 500 existing volunteers on Vancouver Island. It’s a tall order, but completely worth it. Every day I get to go home knowing that my contribution helped get the gift of blood to patients in need. Every day I go home knowing that I helped save lives.

You want to know the best part? As a volunteer for Canadian Blood Services, you could too.

Canadian Blood Services couldn’t help the lives of Canadians if it weren’t for our volunteers. My favourite statistic is as follows: in our organization we have about 4200 employees and over 17,000 volunteers.

17,000! If I could capitalize numbers, I would!

With numbers like these, it is not hard to see why our volunteers are truly the backbone of our organization. The contribution of every single volunteer helps to save the lives of Canadians who need blood or blood products.

So how do they do it?

Let’s start with our In-Clinic Volunteers, the heart and soul of our clinics. Our In-Clinic Volunteers ease donors into the post-donation process by escorting them to the refreshment area and serving them juice, cookies and conversation. By chatting with our donors, they help to keep them up to date on everything that it is going on with Canadian Blood Services. In-Clinic volunteers also have the extremely important task of maintaining donor safety by watching for signs of fainting or re-bleeding. A very important task indeed!

Our In-Community Volunteers are “let loose” in their towns. They work at information and recruitment booths at fairs, festivals and shopping centres and help us recruit new donors into the clinics. These volunteers are outgoing; they love chatting with new people and are passionate about signing people up to become blood donors.

Whether they are serving juice, cookies and conversation in the clinic, or chatting and recruiting new donors in our communities, our volunteers are giving back to their communities in a very unique way. The donor they are speaking to, or the prospective donor they are recruiting, could be carrying the gift of blood that saves someone’s life.

We currently have volunteer opportunities all over the island: Victoria, Mill Bay, Duncan, Ladysmith, Nanaimo, Parksville, Port Alberni, Comox and Campbell River. If you would like to learn more about volunteering for Canadian Blood Services, feel free to contact me at the link below or visit the Canadian Blood Services website and  fill out an application form.

You could be helping to save lives right this very moment!

Kate Zealand
Volunteer Resources Coordinator
Canadian Blood Services
Email Kate Zealand
Website

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