Community Volunteer

As a non profit organization, AHC is run by volunteers. Hundreds of volunteers are organizing or running CI or other community building groups. Since November 2004, we have been piloting our volunteer program that includes 4 components: 1) recruitment of new volunteers to strengthen our organization and community capacity, 2) provision of focused opportunities to strengthen our volunteers employability capacity, 3) creation of the policy manuals needed to effectively run the volunteer program and the organization; and, 4) creation of a resource centre for volunteers involved in community development. Different sets of training have been created as follows:  

Volunteers Information and Training sessions

AHC holds information and training sessions every second Friday of each month to individuals interested in becoming our volunteers. Training sessions, include but are not limited to, topics such as:

·         AHC History, philosophy and strategies

·         AHC strategic plan

·         AHC approaches to

Ø       organize CI

Ø       organize multicultural gatherings

Ø       organize fundraising events

Ø       facilitate community development

Volunteer development training

AHC also provides training opportunities for volunteers to develop skills in their area of interest, as needed. These trainings are designed for individuals who are either changing careers and are volunteering to gain more experience in their prospective careers, or for individuals volunteering to gain experience for a potential employment.

Volunteer Training for Community Development

AHC offers training workshops to increase capacity of volunteers to become community volunteers-leaders and of community volunteer-leaders to become Community Animators (see Community Leadership). The first set of training workshops is designed to help new community volunteers to create or run Community Initiatives (CI) effectively.  The second set of training workshops is designed to help community volunteer-leaders to coach and train, as animators, new community volunteer-leaders to be effective in their community development work.

Potential community animators are trained on various community development approaches, human relationships, and intra/inter-cultural interactions to increase their employability skills in the field. Volunteers are provided the opportunity to apply their new knowledge through a practicum to help people develop cross-cultural/ inclusivity competence and increase their ability to train and couch community leaders interested in creating or coordinating CI. Monthly sessions have been held on topics such as the following:

·         Approach to organize Community Initiatives

·         Building bridges across cultures: finding common ground 

·         Barriers/stereotypes in cultures and fear of difference

·         Exploring specific central Edmonton cultural group

·         Conflict: "Exploring egos and values to achieve common ground". 

AHC is working with current volunteers to collaboratively create new capacity building initiatives and resources to enhance volunteer employability skills by offering more systematic training based on a needs assessment, experience, and opportunities developed within EHCS and sister organizations. It is expected to create a more systematic program to train community volunteers to be employable as Culturally Skilled Community Animators.

Volunteer On-Site Training

Designed to provide volunteers with meaningful experiential opportunities to enhance their skills, increase experience in the non profit sector, and gain awareness of their own capacity by creating volunteer positions appropriate to the needs of EHCS’ programs participants and of the volunteers themselves.

If you are interested in participating or volunteering in any of these training Activities, please call 944 4687 or e-mail action4@shawbiz.ca.