Mountaineer Volunteer: Laura Stovel

The Mountaineer Volunteer is a pay-it-forward feature in the Revelstoke Mountaineer that highlights the great work volunteers do to make Revelstoke a true community. We feature a new volunteer who then nominates the volunteer to be featured next.

Where do you volunteer?

I volunteer with the North Columbia Environmental Society, the Local Food Initiative, Revelstoke for Refugees, Safe Spaces (read Stovel’s article on a resident’s experience Growing up Gay in Revelstoke), the Aboriginal Friendship Society and the School District’s Aboriginal Education Committee.

I also volunteer outside of formal societies. For example, when the Ebola crisis hit West Africa in 2014, friends and I organized a fundraiser at the Performing Arts Centre for Medecins Sans Frontiers, a medical aid organization that was working on the ground.

I also volunteer wherever I live and travel. In Sierra Leone, for example, I set my living room up as a classroom and taught children and adults literacy skills using, among other things, Nigerian alphabet posters and peanuts. It is easy to find ways to be useful and the interactions greatly enrich my experience of local cultures.

When Axis Mundi festival organizer Hugo Rampen brought Rwandan musicians to Revelstoke last fall, Laura Stovel had the honour of hosting Samuel Uwimana, who she says is a fabulous pianist. “Hosting people and bringing people together around my dinner table always enriches my life,” she said. Photo: contributed

What do you do as a volunteer?

I do a range of things. I have served on boards. I help organize events, workshops and fundraisers. Sometimes I sit at tables with other volunteers and help promote our society.

I organize pot lucks at my place to bring people together to share ideas — I have done that for several societies and groups — and offer my home for meetings and workshops. Sometimes I make and distribute posters or book hotel rooms — whatever needs to be done at the time.

Why do you volunteer?

Laura Stovel at home. Photo: Agathe Bernard

We live in a great community with lots of wonderful and dedicated volunteers. I love volunteering because I get to meet and work with these people and together we make Revelstoke the kind of place that we want to live in.

Contributing to positive change, making things happen and connecting people who would enjoy knowing each other gives me energy.

We are also blessed in Revelstoke with some very good funding organizations — Columbia Basin Trust, the Revelstoke Credit Union and the Community Foundation, to name a few.

The more I volunteer the more I learn about how to apply for grants to support worthy projects and how to work together with other community organizations to benefit the community.

We have benefited from some great mentors who know about organizing, applying for grants, and creating strong societies — Garry Pendergast, Cindy Pearce, Jill Zacharias and Jane McNab are among those who have mentored me — and now I can start to mentor other people who are interested in learning about these things.

Fix it Fair from left: Tim Auger (in black), Laura Stovel and Nicole Cherlet fix items for community members as part of the NCES Fix it Fair hosted at Big Mountain Kitchen on June 27. Photo: Agathe Bernard

What’s most rewarding about volunteering?

Volunteering is a great way to meet positive, creative people who share ideas that make what might have once seemed impossible possible.

In my case, I was involved with the creation of the Safe Spaces and Aboriginal Friendship Societies, Revelstoke for Refugees and the Sustainable Living Committee of the North Columbia Environmental Society.

Societies bring people together who have similar interests and they can accomplish a lot. Revelstoke for Refugees has benefited greatly from the generosity of people in Revelstoke and is now ready to support a Syrian family when they arrive. Less than a year ago this was only a dream.

Laura Stovel chats to a group of local residents on a tour of her sustainable home. Photo: Agathe Bernard

Anything else you would like to add?

Volunteering doesn’t have to take place through organizations. There are many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in our community who volunteer by offering help to those in need around them or take informal steps to make our town a better place.

I see these acts of kindness and social responsibility every day and they contribute to a local culture of care. It makes me feel very lucky and proud to live here.

I am always impressed with the fact that volunteers in Revelstoke range from ‘old-timers’ like me to those who have just arrived and want to contribute.

Sometimes people are just here for the ski season yet they jump right in to volunteer as tutors at Okanagan College or whatever else they are interested in. I think that’s incredible.