Blog
Get tips about design and facilitation
Work-Life Balance When Facilitating Online
Last November I took Royal Roads University's Instructional Skills Workshop Online (ISWO) course in order to prepare for co-facilitating it in February as part of my work responsibilities there. (I'm on a one-year contract as an instructional designer until early...
The practice of council
A couple of weeks ago I took a fantastic course through RRU Continuing Studies called The Practice of Council. It was a course held in council (what some people call "circle"), and taught us the basics of council process. We had two fabulous facilitators who modelled...
Interview with the Volunteer Program Coordinator at Victoria Women’s Transition House
To recognize International Women's Day today I interviewed Dianne de Champlain, Volunteer Program Coordinator at Victoria Women's Transition House Society. Dianne was kind enough to explain more about her role, her work with volunteers, and why she's passionate about...
Connect with volunteer management professionals at the AVRBC 2013 Conference
There's an event coming up that I've been looking forward to attending since about December 2011. That's when I and a few other dedicated individuals started working on planning it! It's the 2013 Administrators of Volunteer Resources BC Provincial Conference, for...
Creating our own learning opportunities
In January I presented to The Victoria Business Moms at the invitation of the group's organizer, Heather Solomonson. The topic I spoke about was non-traditional ways to create professional development opportunities for ourselves. At the delightful Crumsby's cafe in...
The path to certification in volunteer administration
In 2011 the Canadian Administrators of Volunteer Resources went back to the drawing board with their professional certification process for individuals who manage volunteers and last year decided to partner with the Council for Certification in Volunteer...
Facilitating great activities takes some planning
I always find it exciting to sit down and develop a lesson plan for a course, workshop or presentation and visualize how everything is going to fall together. Of course, it's not something that happens in one sitting - often creating lesson plans is the culmination of...
One great idea to engage Generation X (and more) volunteers
On the weekend I was up in Parksville, facilitating a session at the Canadian Parents for French conference. It was about "Engaging All Generations of Volunteers" and we got into an interesting discussion about how my generation - Generation X - don't usually have a...
Oh, the people we know!
Last night I went to a networking event put on by Volunteer Victoria's Emerging Leaders Network and this morning I'm filled yet again with admiration for the people that work in and around the nonprofit sector in Victoria. We've got us some great people here working...
2013, I expect great things from you
I realized that I've been putting off writing this inaugural blog post for 2013 because I wasn't really sure what to say. Truthfully it's been hanging over my head that at the beginning of last year I chose a "word to live by" for 2012 - ENJOY - and I really don't...