{"id":4332,"date":"2019-10-28T10:15:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T17:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/?p=4332"},"modified":"2019-10-28T10:15:28","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T17:15:28","slug":"volunteer-spotlight-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/?p=4332","title":{"rendered":"Volunteer Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Volunteer Spotlight for the Month of October is Loretta Cooper!<\/p>\n

How long have you been with Habitat?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

3 years, since October 2016.<\/p>\n

Why did you start volunteering at Habitat? <\/strong><\/p>\n

When Jimmy Carter got involved in HfH, I was very interested in the organization but didn\u2019t have time to become involved. After moving to West Kelowna and retiring I knew I wanted to start volunteering.\u00a0 The first place I started volunteering was HfH.\u00a0 I started in the ReStore. My retail skills were rusty, and I really thought my skills were more useful at a committee level, but I worked in the West Kelowna ReStore. A year later, I was asked to be on the Family Selection Committee, as well.<\/p>\n

What do you do as a volunteer?\u00a0 What is meaningful about your volunteer contribution?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I volunteered for 2 1\/2 years in the ReStore, re-organizing and taking care of the Books & Media section.\u00a0 As the books were organized by genres, I was able to track that our best sellers were Romance, Thrillers, then Mysteries. I really enjoyed taking pride in the Books & Media section. In February of this year I had to give up volunteering in the ReStore as my time commitment increased for FSC.<\/p>\n

The Family Selection Committee was the work I really had the skills for.\u00a0 As a retired Licensing Officer, I was trained and experienced in interviewing for assessments and investigations.\u00a0 I also knew how to write reports and policies. I joined the FSC with 3 long time members and 6 other new members, Expansion in the organization as well as the committee, caused us to redefine our roles, policies and procedures. We all jumped into the work whole heartedly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This spring I took on the role of chairing a sub-committee to rewrite the policies related to the Homeownership Program.\u00a0 So far, our committee of 4 has rewritten 4 policies: Selection Criteria, Housing Need, Ability to Pay, Willingness to Partner.<\/p>\n

As a few FSC members came and went I noticed new members needed more training in how to \u201cinterview the Habitat way\u201d we had developed over the last two years.\u00a0 I\u2019m now also chairing another sub-committee to develop a training program, including workshops on \u201cInterviewing the Habitat Way.\u201d Two of us are currently developing a curriculum for a series of 3 workshops based on what the members of the FSC has learned from experience over the past two years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additional Comments?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In February 2019, the FSC took the bold move of holding a \u201cDo I Qualify?\u201d session to attract applications.\u00a0 We hoped for 25 families to show up. \u00a0Well, 180 families showed up!! And over 100 application packages were handed out. By June we had 193 applications, when in all of 2018 we had a total of 119. After the office had sorted the applications and determined whose application met our guidelines, they moved to the FSC for the next steps.\u00a0 The next steps include two home visits and interviews, by FSC members, to determine suitability based on the Three Pillars: Housing Need, Ability to Pay and Willingness to Partner.<\/p>\n

Two members of the FSC do a 1st Home Visit and Interview.\u00a0 After the interview each member does a report and an assessment that goes to the FSC.\u00a0 If the applicant family meets the criteria of the Three Pillars, they move forward to a 2nd interview with another two members of the FSC.\u00a0 After the second interview the members also each write a report and assessment, which goes to the FSC. The FSC then determines if the applicant family is forwarded to the Board of Directors to become a family that may<\/u> get a Habitat home.<\/p>\n

From March through October the FSC has been very busy doing 1st<\/sup> and 2nd<\/sup> interviews, as a result of the doubled increase of applications. In 2018, I did 5 interviews, in 2019, so far, I have done 9. \u00a0It is very satisfying and inspiring meeting these families in their homes and hearing their stories, challenges and dreams.\u00a0 And especially to hear of their hope for a Habitat Home.<\/p>\n

Manager\u2019s perspective.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Loretta is one of Habitat\u2019s champions.\u00a0 She has contributed 440 hours of her experience, her talent, her time, her positive attitude, initiative, innovation, leadership and her ability to \u2018tell it like it is\u2019 while holding the space for compassion, care and generosity.<\/p>\n

Why is Habitat for Humanity Okanagan such a great organization?\u00a0 Because of volunteers like Loretta.<\/p>\n

Thank you for everything you do at Habitat Loretta!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volunteer Spotlight for the Month of October is Loretta Cooper! How long have you been with Habitat?\u00a0 3 years, since October 2016. Why did you start volunteering at Habitat? When Jimmy Carter got involved in HfH, I was very interested in the organization but didn\u2019t have time to become involved. After moving to West Kelowna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[21,33],"class_list":["post-4332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-volunteer-spotlight","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4336,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions\/4336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.habitatforhumanityokanagan.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}