Photo Blog - Making a difference in 20 minutes

In the spirit of Earth Day, our team participated in the 20 Minute Makeover and cleaned up the litter around our neighbourhood.

Volunteer Week - guest blog by Victor Zamin

In honour of National Volunteer Week, we’ve asked one of KW’s true community heroes, Victor Zamin, to tell us what motivates him to volunteer.

Since first moving to the KW area in 1990, Victor has launched himself fully into making a difference in this community. He joined the United Way KW Board of Directors in 2007, and served as our Campaign Chair in 2008 and 2009. Victor then went on to become our Board Chair in 2010 and is now completing his second year as Chair. For exemplifying the spirit of giving through his dedication to the community, Victor was honoured with the Arlene Smith Memorial Award at this year’s Community Spirit Awards. We at United Way KW are very grateful to Victor's family and his employer, Scotiabank, for supporting his volunteer efforts.

 Here’s why Victor thinks volunteering is so important:

 As a child, my parents made a point of reminding us that our family was fortunate and it was important for us to give back to our community. They were tireless volunteers and we adopted the philosophy: “You get what you give.” This belief has echoed in my mind throughout my life, and I’ve instilled it in my family as well.

When you get involved in your community and start to see the impact of your volunteer efforts, it’s easy to become passionate about being able to help.

Over the years, I’ve watched our region transform into a key player on the world stage, receiving global recognition as an intellectual and technology leader. Despite this success, though, there are still many in our community being left behind. In my view, this is not acceptable and needs to change.

What does it take to make such change happen? It takes an ongoing commitment to our community, and to deepening the capacity of our not-for-profit sector through innovation, collaboration and leadership.

We are all part of the fabric of this community. We all deserve to share in its success…and all share the responsibility to ensure that no one is left behind.

By sharing our time and talents with organizations like United Way KW, together we can achieve – and are achieving – lasting, positive change…right here in our own backyard.

 

Thank you to all of our community volunteers for all that you do!

Victor Zamin

Scotiabank

GO GREEN!

The recent arrival of spring serves as a great reminder to us all to think green. Are you doing your part?

Back in March 2010, United Way KW launched a “Go Green” initiative aimed at bringing environmental awareness to all that we do. We committed to a triple bottom line of “people, planet and prosperity,” whereupon we would strive to ensure the planet benefitted as we worked cost-effectively to build a prosperous community.

Efforts are ongoing to instill a culture of environmental sustainability here at United Way KW, and we were pleased to recently celebrate the 2^nd anniversary of “Go Green.”

We now consider what is best for the planet in all of our decision-making processes and everyday activities. For example, one of our key goals is to reduce the costs associated with office supplies and printed materials. Here’s what we’re now doing in that regard:

·         Our paper supplies are biodegradable, contain recycled materials and come from sustainable forestry.

·         We’ve reduced the amount of paper we use by printing and copying double-sided documents whenever possible and asking ourselves beforehand whether documents really need to be printed.

·         Our printed materials use vegetable based inks and are only printed in the quantities we truly need.

·         We minimize waste by using a recycling station.

·         We provide shredded paper to the KW Humane Society for animal bedding.

·         We are observing members of Sustainable Waterloo Region, a non-profit organization dedicated to collaboratively advancing the environmental sustainability of organizations throughout Waterloo Region.

·         We participate in local Earth Day clean-ups and turn the temperature down on National Sweater Day.

We’re still learning and we know we have a way to go, but we persist knowing that the small changes we make today will eventually add up to make a big impact on our organization, our community and our planet.

Cathy Snyder

CFO and CAO, United Way KW