Woodland Cultural Centre is giving residents a chance to get more involved with the museum through its brand new volunteer program.
Maichina Veri, Woodland Cultural Centre’s (WCC) Volunteer Program Coordinator, said she spent the past summer working to implement the new initiative.
“I spent summer 2024 getting in contact with a range of people, from the Paris Museum and Historical Society all the way up to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), to talk about their volunteer programs,” said Veri. “There were probably about 20 to 30 different museums, galleries and centres around Ontario that I spoke with to help develop a program for Woodland Cultural Centre, and everyone that I talked to was amazing and really helpful. I then took a little tidbit from everyone to help put together a cohesive program suitable for the WCC and I’ve since been looking to recruit volunteers.”
She said that when it came down to creating and implementing the program, she wanted to make sure that volunteers would have the chance to truly connect with the work.
“This program is important to me because I really want to connect volunteers with meaningful experiences and something that they’re passionate about as well,” said Veri. “It’s great to have people drop in and give their time where they can, but to have something more formal where there are defined roles and defined responsibilities like this really allows for more structure, and I think it will give people more of a sense of accomplishment rather than just showing up and not really knowing what to do.”
While the WCC is always looking for volunteers for special events, Veri said she also saw the opportunity for people to get more involved with the daily operations that come with running the museum.
“With this new program, we now have opportunities to volunteer with the language centre, the resource library, the operations and the education departments, as well as the gift shop and front desk,” she said. “They all have defined roles with times that people can come in and support the centre but of course, I’m very flexible with people’s schedules because I know that it can be a lot to find time to volunteer, and anything is worthwhile for us.”
Trisha Kelley, WCC’s Development and Marketing Manager, added that having volunteers aiding in the support of daily roles, really allows staff to have more time to develop further programming that they may not get to tend to otherwise.
“With the different admin things that non-profits kind of get bogged down in, this will really open up our staff up to focus on creating programming that is upcoming and new. For example, if you were to volunteer with the education department, one of the things you would do is make the craft kits. Our education department does something in-person with students almost every day and they see probably up to like 200 to 300 students a week. Currently, they’re not only facilitating those programs, but then they also have to make the craft kits and that can take up a lot of time, right? So having a volunteer to help them make those craft kits really frees them up to design and create new programming for visitors.”
Veri said that the new program not only allows volunteers to get involved with certain departments, but that there’s room for cross-department training too.
“We do have a bit of an interview process for the daily roles… not because we’re going to turn people away or anything like that, but more so to just find the best fit for them. Once they’re on board, they’ll go through an orientation and then we would do in-department training and from there the department heads would take on the volunteers that they need,” said Veri. “With that being said, there is room for cross-department training and people are more than welcome to be a bit free flowing and kind of go where their interests are. I know even with work experience, sometimes your interests change and you may want to pursue something different so for the volunteers, they’ll get that opportunity to be trained in another area and build their resume and network with other people as well.”
On top of daily roles, which are available during the week, any time between 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Veri added that for those who may not be able to volunteer during those times, there are plenty of special events outside of that too.
“We totally understand that it can be difficult for people to commit their time to daily roles given that Monday to Friday is both a work week and a school week, but we also have the special events like the upcoming Winterfest Community Social, for example, that are happening during the evenings and on weekends that people are more than welcome to help out with also,” she said.
Overall, Veri said she’s excited about the program and will continue to develop it further throughout the year.
“It’s important to me to do meaningful work that can contribute to the centre and also produce results. It’s been really nice to see how everything has turned out and how it will continue to grow because I’m not done yet,” Veri said. “I’m going to be doing a more formal docent program where we may be looking for retired educators, or something along those lines, who could help participate and volunteer their time to do tours of the galleries and such. Also, once the former Mohawk Institute is open, we’ll need volunteers, one per floor, to help out the people that are coming to view it”
Kelley said that herself and the rest of the team at the WCC are looking forward to the new programming and are grateful for all of Veri’s work.
“We really want to just thank our generous sponsors because Maichina’s role and the program itself have been funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation through the Resilient Communities Fund grant,” she said. “We’re just very grateful that we’ve been able to bring her on and to start this program, and we really want to just thank everyone who was so giving with their time and their resources to help create this.”
If anyone is interested in getting involved as a volunteer, Veri said they can send an email to frontdesk@woodlandculturalcentre.ca with the subject line “ATTENTION Maichina” and that she will get back to them as soon as possible with more information.
For those looking to learn more details about daily volunteer and special event opportunities, please visit https://woodlandculturalcentre.ca/support/volunteer/
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
