Volunteers

This section is about One Sky volunteers. One Sky relies on volunteers so if you are interested please see the section under You – Volunteering for One Sky. In this section you will find information and profiles on previous volunteers, current volunteer opportunities and volunteer led projects. One Sky has benefited from volunteers in a variety of capacities, from board directors to overseas volunteer positions, and we value our volunteers very much. Indeed, as the years go by, the number of volunteer hours becomes mind-boggling. We would like to thank everyone who has volunteered for One Sky, in Canada, internationally or in cyberspace. 

Examples of current volunteers include:

As part of our Eco Action III program, A Fork in the Road, grade 6 volunteers, Jessie Kapelari and Billy deSteiger have been picking up compost from Main Street businesses every Thursday afterschool. Read more...

Board Member Sandra Thompson will be leading our next World Tour to Peru. Sandra has extensive experience volunteering and working in South America and recently led workshops on integral community development in Peru as a part of One Sky’s Peru Mapacho River Project

Benji Kamara has teamed up with One Sky and Smithers volunteers Emily, Craig, Jeff and Chayo to support children in Sierra Leone to go to school as part of the Sowing a Seed project. Students at Telkwa, Muheim, St. Joe’s and Walnut Elementary Schools in Smithers have also been volunteering their time to fundraise for the project while volunteers in Freetown are connecting with schools and students to support. Thanks to all for your energy and heart!

Examples of past volunteer experiences include:

Research projects in which students or researchers have taken on a specific component of research such as alluvial diamond mining research.

Erika Close undertook a major research project looking at the feasibility of alluvial diamond mining restoration in West Africa. A recent graduate in geography, she brought her expertise in microhydrology to this critical report which she researched over a period of months. Her findings allowed us to assess the feasibility of working in Eastern Sierra Leone and determine best practices from elsewhere.  Today, we have a restoration project underway in Kono, Eastern Sierra Leone.

Skills development in which a person with a particular skill such as computer programming or financial management offers to pass these on in a capacity building workshop or series of skills training exercises.

Kris Dartnell approached One Sky regarding the completion of a Royal Roads masters in business administration. Kris was a senior employee for Salasan and had years of experience doing international financial assessments, audits and capacity building. She joined the One Sky team in Nigeria and helped the CRE coalition develop the financial capacity of four key environmental groups and a network.

Carrying out activities related to a particular One Sky project

Tomoko helped out with a variety of activities in the One Sky office including preparing a display on One Sky Energy’s Program for the Smithers Trade Show as well as conducting interviews and writing stories for West Africa Alive. 

Event coordination in which a volunteer might take on some or all aspects of a One Sky event such as our annual auction or a slide show.

Every year our loyal volunteers sign-up to help us put on the One Sky Goods and Services Auction - setting up tables and auction items, cooking and serving food, auctioneering and running kids activities. We couldn’t do it without them!

Program development such as coordination of our bicycle program.

Chris approached One Sky about his dream to develop a free blue bike program in Smithers in order to distribute free bikes to low income families and make bicycles more accessible.  After a summer of volunteering we thought it was such a good idea we held a fundraiser, raised some money for tools and today have a full time summer program.

Volunteer labour is how we replaced our roof, how we painted our building, and how we renovated our offices.

Dave Pellow is a local construction contractor who has built many of the homes in Smithers for decades.  Two years ago Dave showed up with air tools in hand and completely rebuilt our roof so that we would be covered by insurance and have something solid to mount our solar panels to. It was quite the sight seeing Dave hanging over the edge fixing our soffits at no charge.  Thanks Dave!

There is nothing like a coat of new paint to spruce things up.  The local Smithers youth volunteers bathed our building in blue after scrubbing and scraping thirty years of wear and tear off the outside of the building.  It was quite the ordeal and it took more than twelve pairs of hands to get the job done.  Thanks, it looks great!

Volunteer contracting – sometimes firms or individuals offer to volunteer their services to One Sky at discounted prices or even for free.  This makes a huge difference to our bottom line.

SparkDesign developed the web page you are looking at and it rocks!  A web page this complex is outside of our budget and they kindly offered a stiff discount.  We could not have done this without you!