Volunteer
Give Us Your Support Become a Volunteer
By giving your time and expertise, you can make a difference to someone who is just taking their first steps in recovery. Renascent is happy to welcome volunteers no matter your experience or expertise. Here is how you can be of service:
- Counselling support
- Administrative support: data entry, mailings
- Writing and research
- Fundraising
- Event support
If you can provide help or feel you could be useful in another way, call Joanne Steel at 416-847-6457 or contact us via email.
What our volunteers say:
“I was at a crossroads. I could carry on and let my addiction finish me or I could seek professional treatment and regain control of my life. Thankfully I chose the latter and found Renascent – a place where I could get the tools I needed to live a sober life. With Renascent’s help, I learned the importance of giving in order to get back. Today, as a member of the Men’s Alumni Committee (Sullivan), I am able to lend assistance to those individuals who seek the benefits of recovery.”
“I had abused drugs of every kind for 19 years of my life. There was a time when I was able to do this and manage my life. I had skills, good jobs, a marriage and a home. But as my disease progressed, nothing else seemed important anymore. My addiction was my job, my only priority. I completed the residential program and continued to do the things that were suggested. I also started to volunteer. I had lost many things through the years, especially my self-esteem and self-worth. My volunteer experience really helped me remember and regain the qualities I once possessed. It’s now almost two years. I am grateful, sober, employed and I have a life thanks to Renascent.”
“As a family member of a drug and alcohol abuser, I really didn’t need the help. After all, I wasn’t the one using the substance, I had my life in control, I had the job, the car, the house…I had balance. So I thought. It wasn’t overnight that I realized I needed help, it wasn’t that my life was unmanageable, everything in my world would be story book, if only he would get the help. It wasn’t until things at home became unbearable, that I was forced to put a label on the craziness in my world, and when I was tired enough of being tired, I started asking for help. In my quest of trying to make sense of the nonsense, I decided to take some courses in order to gain knowledge. In my mind, the knowledge would sneakily teach me how to fix my broken addict, I learned differently. My moment of clarity came to me when I realized my educational pursuits brought out a drive and passion within me that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was now able to turn my pain into someone else’s hope. My opportunity to help came in the form of an open position to volunteer at Renascent. All the while I was looking for ways to mend my addict, I was actually healing myself. When I began volunteering with Renascent’s Essential Family Care Sessions I quickly identified with all the abnormal behaviours I was in fact exhibiting, after all, my path to getting here was prompted out of my need to control and cure my addict! I found great solace in meeting other family members who have been in my shoes, and in knowing that although I cannot control another’s actions, I did have total control over my reactions. I was able to find a sense of peace I had not felt in a long time, my reactions became responses, and I knew definitively where I wanted to be in my world. With all that I have learned at Renascent, I found myself feeling a strong desire to share as much of it as I can. Over the course of almost 2 years of being blessed with Renascent, I find hope and healing in being the conduit to which others can experience their own piece of peace. I am truly grateful to Renascent, and to everyone I’ve met along the way for giving me the tools to clear my own junk, and to live again.”
