Volunteer Appreciation Dinner Photo Gallery 2009
Click on an image below to view it in full size.
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Honoring Our Volunteers: A Very Special Part of Hope
It was a night of gratitude, celebration and story-telling. The annual Hope Volunteer Recognition Dinner is an opportunity for Hope to honor the deep commitment of volunteers. In 2008, Hope volunteers gave 10,488 hours of their time.
As Hope staff expressed their appreciation to those that give their time reading to children, tutoring adult students in English, teaching filmmaking to youth, and much more, many volunteers spoke about what inspires them to volunteer at Hope. Volunteer Stephanie MacPhail shared her own story about her experience with Hope’s community literacy program, Learning in Community:
I love how Learning in Community’s focus is on confidence-building. The other week, I was working with one little guy who always tries hard, but has a lot of trouble reading. He picked out a bunch of books for us to read, all level 2 books (out of 25 levels) that he’d read every week…the “I am Sam” level books. He saved a higher level book for last. He concentrated so hard on this higher level book and got through the whole thing.
On the sheet where we write all of the books we read, this boy always tells me to write, “I liked it” on every single book. When it came time to say how he felt about this one, he said “I didn’t like it, it was hard. But I’m proud that I read it”.