I am looking for…
Become a Volunteer
For more than 55 years, Volunteer West Island has recruited enthusiastic, competent, and devoted volunteers to respond to the various needs of the West Island of Montreal community. Volunteers mentor our children, feed our hungry, comfort the lonely, beautify our green spaces and provide front-line services to support hundreds of groups and charitable organizations. Volunteerism is a vehicle for social inclusion, citizen engagement, skills-development, and enhancing democracy.
Volunteering, a place for everyone
VWI welcomes anyone wishing to contribute to the well-being of their community. It is extremely important to promote the importance of the role of volunteers in a community by inviting all people, with or without disabilities, to join them in meeting the needs of the community. It is therefore our responsibility as builders and protectors of the community to welcome and accommodate all those who wish to contribute to its well-being.
Recruiting volunteers with intellectual or developmental disabilities equally benefits the organizations that receive them. Not only do groups earn a greater volume of hardworking, invested volunteers, the community has the potential to become more integrative, inclusive and accommodating.
We Support our Volunteers
Regardless of the methods of support that are utilized, it is useful to ensure they address the following principles of support:
- Accessibility: Volunteers must be able to access the support. This means the support must be available at appropriate times and places and in forms that the volunteers can use. Volunteer West Island has a resource person available to all in-house volunteers.
- Flexibility: Support strategies provided should accommodate the needs of individuals.
- Appropriateness: Support strategies should be applicable to the work that the volunteers are undertaking.
- Shared responsibility: Support comes from a variety of sources both from within the organization, through staff and other volunteers but also through friends and relatives and other contacts.