Volunteering makes a society healthy and progressive. No community can grow without people giving back to the community they live in. One such example of unconditional love for her community is Dawn Pegus. Her love for helping people and passion to give back to her community and to make a difference in the lives of others, landed her at Peel Youth Village and Angela’s Place.
Dawn, who has a busy full-time career as a Coordinator at the Region of Peel, started volunteering at her local church with her husband who is the Community Service Director responsible for planning programs to impact the community around their local church. She then branched out into the community, doing community programs like the breakfast for kids program, planning trips for seniors in the same church and the community, and helping with the food bank program at church.
Presently, Dawn is the Program Coordinator for the Breakfast for Kids program where she recruits and trains volunteers for the program, prepares schedules and plans menu and does all the shopping for supplies that are needed in order to successfully deliver the program. Not only that, she also helps with the cooking twice a week! Her volunteering doesn’t end there, she is always available to fill-in whenever there is a shortage of volunteers or when someone is absent.
Giving back is a very rewarding and enriching experience for Dawn. She summarizes, “This has been a very rewarding and humbling experience for me. I was able to sharpen so many of my skills including my communication skills, which has improved greatly, as well as my planning, organizing and training skills. I’ve also made some great friends and relationships through this program”.
While you develop some of your skills by volunteering, your services to the community never go unnoticed. You are also appreciated and recognized for your selfless services to your community. Dawn’s greatest accomplishment in her role, as she describes, would be when she was a recipient of the “Helping Hands Certificate” in 2013 by Volunteer MBC, which came as a great and pleasant surprise to her.
One of the benefits of volunteering in Dawn’s life is, “making a difference in the lives of young children and being able to see the change, and hear the stories from teachers about the change they are seeing when the kids have a healthy breakfast in the morning and are able to concentrate on their school work”.
To those who want to get involved and give back, Dawn says, “It’s a great blessing to be able to give back and make a difference in your community, so get involved and make a difference wherever you can”.
Dawn extends an open invitation to anyone who has an hour or two hours to spare in the morning (6:30AM to 8:30 AM). This could be one morning or two mornings per week whatever they can give, to come out and volunteer your time and make a difference in the lives of children, as they are all our kids and our future generation who can sure use your help.
Dawn and her husband, who also helps out, would be more than happy to welcome you aboard this awesome journey of volunteering.