Meet Lise St-Michel, volunteer receptionist at Sun Youth. She has been involved with our organization for close to 4 years. She is retired from Bell Canada where she acted as a Director, an Assistant Controller and in Executive Development. Following her departure from Bell, she also worked part-time as a client services coordinator for Bombardier. This is where she met Daniel Rousseau, who is now the Vice-President of Finance at Sun Youth. When he joined the organization, he contacted Lise, his former employee, to suggest she volunteers for Sun Youth, which she did. Volunteering isn’t anything new to her though. Before retiring, she volunteered for many years at Tel-Aide and at Le Club des Petits déjeuners, which she enjoyed very much.
To give is to receive
Lise, like many other volunteers, is now an essential part of Sun Youth and the organization is an important part of her new life as a retiree. She says that she gets a lot out of being a volunteer receptionist: “It allows me to learn about the reality of certain people, clients of the organization who are living in poverty situations. That’s something new to me. It also allows me to learn about different cultures and ethnicities.” Client services is something she loves and that she wanted to continue doing after retiring: “When I leave here, I feel like I did something good, that I helped people!”
A positive outlook on life
“Life is good to me: I’m in good health, I have a good family and I have friends. It’s like I want to give back for the good things life has given me”, says Lise. Volunteering is also a change of pace for her: “I’m also a caregiver for my mother who is 98 years old. When I come here, with the phone calls and all, it allows me to be somewhere else, to take me away a little from my daily life and it’s good for me.”
Full-time receptionist Nancy Lauzier only has positive things to say about her colleague Lise: “She is an experienced woman who is very nice, very gentle, very patient and really eager to work. She is very good at explaining to people what they need to do and I learned a lot from listening to her take the calls. She is very professional and it’s very pleasant to work with her. I only see her once a week but it makes a world of difference to me.” When Lise is there Nancy has time to perform other essential tasks such as filing. “I could use 25 others like her!” concludes Nancy.
If you are retired like Lise and have some free time on your hands, why not volunteer for Sun Youth? We’ll be glad to welcome you. You can contact our Volunteers Coordinator, Lisa Perrault, at bvt@sunyouthorg.com or by calling 514-842-6822.
