As we wave good-bye to 2024 and embark upon a new year, we want to take a moment to sincerely thank every single one of our wonderful volunteers! Without your dedication and compassion, [Local Animal Shelter] wouldn’t be able to operate. And if the snuggles and kisses from the approximately thirty dogs and fifty cats in our care are any indication, then every single one of them thanks you too!

This is also the time of year when our Volunteer and Membership Committee is faced with the nearly impossible task of selecting one volunteer as the recipient of our Star Volunteer Award for the previous year. After much deliberation, our 2024 Star Volunteer Award was presented to Jane Doe at our Annual General Meeting earlier this month! Congratulations, Jane!

Jane began volunteering with [Local Animal Shelter] in 2015 when she was eighteen years old after moving to [Our City] to start university. “I grew up with dogs, so when I moved here, I missed them a lot,” Jane says. “The university residence didn’t allow pets, obviously, so volunteering for an hour each week to care for the animals at [Local Animal Shelter] was the next-best thing. The dogs and cats really helped me with my mental health as I adjusted to living away from home.”

After four years of university, in spring of 2019, Jane graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in business with a focus on digital marketing and then began looking for work in her field. While searching for a job, Jane took the initiative to completely redesign our website! (We hate to hide our faces in shame, but our website was not particularly up-to-date and was in desperate need of a refresh.) Jane’s contemporary, fun, heartwarming, and easy-to-navigate design was not only pretty to look at; it also boosted our web traffic and our online donations! A few months later, Jane got an entry-level job at a local marketing agency and launched our Publicity Committee, which she continues to serve on to this day.

Jane is also a regular volunteer at many [Local Animal Shelter] events (where you can usually find her taking pictures and capturing video for our social media accounts) and is always ready to lend a hand with a wide variety of odd jobs. And, of course, she still comes by for an hour every week to care for our cats and pups.

But the main reason that our Volunteer and Membership Committee selected Jane as our 2024 winner occurred in April of that year. As sometimes happens, on the morning of April 10, our staff arrived at work to find a terrified and emaciated pup tethered to our front railing. (PLEASE DON’T DO THIS! Not only does it scare your pet, but it also puts your pet in danger. If you need to surrender your pet, then please bring it to us during regular business hours.) We named the pup, Callie. She was pregnant.

A couple weeks later, Callie gave birth and then died the next day. One of her puppies also died immediately after birth. The other four made it, but, without a mom, they needed a lot of care. And, due to vacancies, our always-busy and always-extraordinary staff were stretched even thinner than usual. So, our wonderfully kindhearted Jane offered to foster the newborn puppies at home. Jane explains, “The marketing agency that I was working at lost a couple of major clients, so they had to lay off some staff, including me. They told us that it would likely be temporary–and it was–but I thought I’d make myself useful in the meantime by caring for these four little things. I cried when they grew up and found forever homes, but I’m happy.”

For all these reasons and so many more, we offer our huge congratulations to Jane and our even huger gratitude for her support!

And for those of you who haven’t made your New Year’s resolutions yet, we’re always looking to add to our volunteer team! We know you’re busy, but even offering a small amount of your time makes a difference. Caring for our animals is a labour of love and there’s always plenty of work to do! Most of it is fun work, though, and our kitties and pups will put a smile in your heart. If you’re interested in joining us, then call us at (555) 555-5555 or click here to fill out our online application form!