Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
The work they still do keeps our society functioning. Without them, where would we be?
 Esther Braden: Convinced the government to Northernize its health-care benefits for seniors. |
Esther Braden wishes there was another word for volunteer.
She is not sure the semantics of the word correctly embody its true meaning. She worries maybe people relate it to extra work, a task rather than a passion.
But Braden is an avid Yellowknife volunteer, a hidden hero among faces at community meetings and charity organizations.
Now in her 70s, Braden is one of many women who has literally changed the world through her many accomplishments.
One of her major efforts was to convince the government to Northernize its health-care benefits for seniors.
"People always say somebody has to do something about it so you volunteer and you do something about it."
Despite Northerners being deemed seniors at 60, in the mid-1980s benefits to pay for eye glasses, hearing aids and other medical supplies did not come into effect for them until age 65, the age of seniors in the rest of the country.
"They figure you are older at 60 because of the harsh environment," Braden said.
As president of the NWT seniors society at the time, Braden led the crusade to push the government of the Northwest Territories to put that funding in place, as well as other seniors' subsidies such as housing and fuel.
Those needs are still very much in demand and housing and fuel subsidies for seniors are still very much at the heart of Braden's volunteer efforts.
"We also wanted the government to consider that seniors were not staying," Braden said. "They would have preferred to stay but could not afford it and that is still a problem."
The long, drawn-out and untraceable effects that volunteers have on everyday life can be partially summed up in those large accomplishments.
Baking cookies hardly attracts the accolades that Braden received for pioneering seniors' benefits.
But it is the smaller tasks volunteers choose to do, happily and eagerly, that make them irreplaceable in a society driven by time, or the lack of it.
The real appeal of volunteering for Braden is a quiet one.
That is when music floats through the extended care unit of the Stanton Regional Hospital and Aven Manor, lifting the spirits of the often confused and lonely members of society.
"It is when you work with someone suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease and you see them responding to the rhythm," Braden said about volunteering in general.
"I suppose it was my upbringing -- being raised on a farm you darn well all pulled together."
Often forgotten resources
Historically in Canada volunteers were women.
Giving one's time was one of the few socially acceptable work outlets for females before paid work became socially acceptable.
Mutual aid and co-operation also flourished in pioneering communities.
The Status of Women Canada wrote in a volunteering brochure that, "Canadian women played a major volunteer role in the areas of social assistance and public charities until governments started to assume more responsibility," in the mid-1900s.
"The statistics are very alarming," Braden said, referring to a drop in volunteers due largely to continual shrinking of government funding.
Overall, the level of volunteer activity in the NWT is higher than average. Of those questioned in an NWT Bureau of Statistics survey, 51 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men said they took part in some sort of volunteer activity.
Another senior volunteer in Yellowknife said it is important that the gap between male and female volunteers close.
Gladys Eggenberger, part of the nation's society of volunteers that has "built institutions, provided charitable services, challenged social injustice, opened doors and secured several women's rights, including the right to vote," according to the Status of Women Canada.
"It's tough getting people to volunteer for any organization," Eggenberger said. "It will probably get tougher and I don't know how we will get around it."
The little things
In January 1999 an 11-year-old boy was briefly left alone with his babysister when their mother left the room to put something away.
The baby was munching on a digestive cookie when suddenly her brother, Michael Nolting, noticed her choking.
"I really didn't think about being nervous," Nolting said when interviewed three years ago. "But I was a little upset and tried to move quickly."
When Michael's mother, Kerri, returned to the room she watched with slight awe, she said a few months after the incident.
"I ran back into the room and Michael had her and was patting her on the back," she said. "And then with his finger he swept out the rest of the cookie from her mouth while I stood there and watched."
Michael Nolting, now a teenager, received a special award from the NWT Commissioner at the time.
The silent faces behind the praise bestowed on the young boy were the volunteers involved in the Yellowknife St. John Ambulance Brigade.
"It was such an innocent little thing he was telling us," said Eggenberger, the St. John Ambulance territorial cadet officer, about Michael's recounting of his experience.
"We were so proud of him."
Among various other volunteer activities Eggenberger organizes brigade training. She also feeds the hungry, soothes the sick and elderly and helped organize the construction of the Baker Centre.
"I've always done volunteer work," she said. "You just do what needs to be done."
Her work spans the age scale and when asked how it feels to know she may be positively changing children's lives without really noticing it, her eyes sparkled and a gracious smile spread across her face.
"If people don't volunteer a lot of organizations will fall by the wayside," she said. "And the people that will lose out are the children."
Long-time volunteer Teresa Lachowski may not ever truly know how deeply she may be heightening the quality of life for kids and teenagers.
"I can put on a pair of skates and that's about the extent of it," she admitted while sitting on the cool, airy bleachers of the Yellowknife Arena.
On the ice surface kids skated along the boards, every once in a while spiralling into a spin or leap and just as frequently falling and sliding with their blades in the air.
One girl, the tiniest, was dressed in pink lace and with hair ribbons to match, her new skates marking the ice in short, beginner strokes.
"She told one of the coaches, 'With my skates I can do anything,'" Lachowski, who has sat on the Yellowknife Skating Club board for 13 years, said.
"It's fun. It's neat to watch the little ones."
Lachowski, like many other NWT volunteers, took on those responsibilities because it related to her children's activities.
Now all her kids are almost grown but her investment in her cause is long from retired.
Studies show that increased physical activity correlates to grades and the overall well-being of kids, she said. Lachowski said she appreciates the idea that her everyday tasks at the arena may have even saved the lives of the some of the children in the long run.
But the passion for what she does was easily spotted as she talked about the infrastructures needed to keep them supplied with "opportunities to shine."
"If user groups don't have these facilities what else will kids have?" she questioned.
"That itself for me is a good reason to volunteer," she added. "You don't know when you are going to touch someone, you just do. The world is made of givers and takers and you decide which you want to be."
