Le bénévolat au Canada

The act of volunteering takes up a huge space in the everyday lives of thousands of Canadians. Many start volunteering as early as in junior school and others join in as late as in their seventies. When I first landed in Toronto, the first advise that I received at the Ontario Employment Center was to take up a volunteering position in some Canadian organization, so as to learn the ways of life in this country, before I could get a paid job.

                Now, although the concept of volunteering was not alien to me and I had volunteered at several organizations in India, including Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity and at the non profit organization for aged and destitute Indians- Help Age India, it was never something that went up on my CV. Primarily because, volunteering in India is something that one does exclusively out of passion for their community and also because it holds little professional significance. However, in Canada the act of volunteering is of such social importance that at High school, a child is expected to complete a minimum of forty hours of social work towards obtaining their final exam grades.

On speaking with a councilor at the employment agency I realized that volunteering experience definitely makes a difference on the status of your resume in Canada because the prospective employer gets a glimpse of your private life, judging by the social work activities that you pursue. Having relevant volunteer experience on the CV helps them to understand how balanced or complete as a social individual you are and also how deeply you feel for the field you want to work in; this in turn gives the employer the security that you will therefore be a hardworking employee, dedicated to your work.

Given this social thinking, one can explain how in even the most hazardous occupations in Canada, you are bound to find a volunteer committee.

Read the following paragraph from HeraldStarOnline.com to get a better idea of volunteering in Canada:

"Toronto Volunteer Fire Department a valuable asset

April 22, 2011

The Herald-Star

While many neighboring municipalities have volunteer fire departments, few are as active as the Toronto Volunteer Fire Department.

Many of the volunteers on the city's force remain there for years, risking life and limb to help their neighbors at perhaps their most important hour of need.

But the volunteer force doesn't just show up during fires and accidents. Members also have to practice and learn new techniques as well as purchase their own gear, which doesn't come cheap.

Luckily the volunteer force has taken a proactive approach to keeping current, with active training and pursuit of grant funds for its needs. One of the most recent grants came from the Ohio Fire Marshal's Office, which will allow the volunteers to purchase new equipment for the city's new fire truck.

The new equipment will help firefighters gain access to threatened buildings quicker, helping to save life and limb faster. The equipment also will help firefighters better protect themselves as well as rescue any inhabitants of a structure fire."

                 I began my career in Toronto at the Missionaries of Charity, which has a small rented out space in Toronto, on Dunn Ave. Four sisters in all run this little shelter for refuges, helping them with food and aid and education for the young ones. I was already accustomed to teaching under privileged children in their Calcutta branch in India. But this turned out to be an educational experience for me as I was able to detect difference in the systems of education in the two countries. The Canadian curriculum, its strengths, weaknesses, emphasis, and every other relevant details became clear to me at once. As also did the disposition of students. Here, the method of learning and the approach of students towards the same is very different from what I was trained to seeing in India. Initially, I had to sit down with their books and go through them meticulously. However, I adjusted quickly to the new developments and won their confidence. The valuable lesson learnt was that volunteering indeed serves its purpose for especially those, who have a cultural difference with this country; this training gives a heads up to such individuals before they get into their respective professions. 

Volunteering programmes and internships are always available to those who seek it. Given below are two links which can give you some guidance:

Volunteer Postings in Toronto - Posted Daily @ Kijiji.ca
Volunteer Postings in Toronto Posted Daily @ Craigslist.ca

From community events, community projects, working with animals, fund raising for community organizations, service clubs and charities,sports and recreation, volunteer work in institutions to youth programs, office and clerical work and even in organizations of arts and culture, everywhere there is a need for volunteers in this country. Volunteering also gives you an opportunity to network with people which often advances career opportunities in turn.

Another esteemed organization in Ontario is AGO- Art Gallery of Ontario.

Founded in 1900 by a group of private citizens as the Art Museum of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario is one of the largest museums in North America. Ranging from Canadian collection to European art, ancient and the contemporary, the AGO holds more than 80,000 works in its collection. Every year, more than 800,000 visitors come to AGO from both neighborhood and abroad, only to be enthralled by the majesty of this building's architecture and the diversity of its collection of artworks.

I became attached to this institution while they were looking for South Asians who could fit  in the role of docents for an exhibition on Maharajas (Kings of India). Luckily for me, my application was accepted at once. It is however not the case for many, as even securing a volunteering position at this organization can be very competitive.

Given below is the process which can get you there, if you would like to begin from here in Canada:

The Process of volunteering at AGO:

·        Once your application is processed, you will be called for an interview at the Art Gallery volunteering cell

·        Each new volunteer has to attend a training session, where he/she will be given an introduction to and information about the gallery that he/she is interested to work in

·        Once you are initiated into the process, you will be allotted a day to volunteer at the assigned gallery, as per your convenience

·        Your shift will range from 3-4 hours, once a week

·        One can work as weekday (Monday-Friday), weekend (Saturday, Sunday) or evening volunteer (Wednesday)

·        Weekend (Saturday and Sunday) volunteers need to work only on alternate days

Potential Duties:

·        Promote people engagement through interaction

·        Provide insight into artworks/ discus about it with the visitor, so as to make it a good visiting and sharing experience for him/her

·        Give gallery tours (training sessions will equip you with the knowledge and information needed to give short tours- only, if and when you are comfortable with giving such guided tours)

For more information please contact the Volunteer Recruitment Office by telephone at 416 979 6660 x 496 or by email at volunteer_recruiters@ago.net

Volunteering forms can be found here: http://artmatters.ca/wp/volunteer-application-form/

Good luck then! Its never too late to start... and you can always begin by volunteering in Canada. It will off course not pay your bills but will get you there if you work towards it!

From Scratch

Meet Kuman, an Indian immigrant to Canada, who has a masters degree in Film production and animation from a reputed institute in South India, now working as an agent in a run-of-the-mill call center in the suburbs of Toronto. Kuman was working on different projects of Diamond Comics Pvt. Ltd., the largest comic book publisher and distributor in India. Marvel comics located his talent and offered him a project in the U.S. After working with Marvel for almost eight months, when the project was scrapped, Kuman found it difficult to give up on his American dreams and as securing a Green card became increasingly difficult, Kuman immigrated to Canada (thanks to the easy enticement of Canadian PR)* but soon realized that worse times were just about to begin.

After hunting for jobs for over six months, he was finally accepted at a call center as an agent, thanks to other sympathetic South Asians working there as team leads. Currently, he answers client queries over the phone and sells insurance to prospective customers, and is somehow managing to survive on $1,600 per month. He is far from the life he deserves and even farther away from his dreams and with his future appearing dimmer with each passing day, he is now thinking of giving up and returning to his old city of Chennai.

Shruchi was a lecturer in the western Indian province of Gujarat. She had post graduated at the top of her class, cleared a very competitive National Eligibility Test (NET) in India and had secured the much coveted position in a government college. However, by way of marriage she had to relocate to Canada and is currently working as a sales person at Walmart.

Kuman and Shruchi are just two out of the hundreds of South Asian immigrants who come to Canada every year in pursuit of a better living. And although Canada welcomes new migrants with valuable skills and qualifications hospitably, often one is disillusioned by the discrimination that is largely at work at every level of employment and in each profession of worth in this country.

A research by Michael Ornstein has shown that low average earnings among recent immigrants in Toronto are affected by the very low earnings among some particularly disadvantaged racial groups. And the two groups are notably blacks and South Asians.

Here I quote from a recent article to Canadian Council on Social development, written by Andrew Jackson :

"The vast majority of working-age immigrants are actively seeking jobs, and the major reasons for their very high poverty rates are the barriers they face in finding employment in stable, reasonably well-paying jobs. The fundamental problem is not a lack of skills. As a group, foreign-born visible minorities are more highly educated than the Canadian average across all age groups. For example, 35% of immigrants aged 25 to 34 have a university degree, compared to the Canadian average of 26%, and high school completion rates are the same.

However, unemployment rates for visible minority immigrants were significantly higher than the average in 1995, and the gaps were largest among the most highly educated groups. The visible minority immigrants who were able to find jobs were over-represented in low-paying, manual, sales or services jobs - 30% vs. 21% - and they were significantly under-represented, not in professional or managerial jobs, but rather in intermediate-skilled manual and technical jobs.

This occupational segregation results in very large earnings differentials. In 1995, visible minority immigrants who were employed full-time for a full year earned just $32,000, compared to the comparable Canadian average of $38,000. And this comparison does not take into account the much higher levels of employment in precarious jobs and periods of unemployment over the year."

Therefore the study makes it quite clear that getting your "dream job" will be quite impossible in Canada, unless you upgrade your qualification with some Canadian degree specific to the field you are interested to work in. In fact, www.migrationnews.com makes this quite clear with the following "Don't-s" for immigrants on their website:

• Don’t expect a job at the same level or higher than you had overseas. You may lack Canadian local knowledge and may need to take a step back in order to advance later. Wait one year.
• Don’t expect the same salary or more than you had overseas.
• Don’t expect a job offer in the first week. On average, it can take native Canadians 1 - 8 weeks to find a new job.

 It is no wonder then that each year about 35% of the immigrants who were doing well in their home country, especially in 3rd world countries, return home and not settle in Canada. And although it is true that a small percentage of such immigrants return home to take advantage of the parity between home currency and Canadian Dollar (1 dollar in Canada = 45 rupees in India), majority return because they would need to upgrade qualifications for just any profession. Even for a receptionist's job or that of a security guard, one would need to have a degree in administrative support work or at least some Canadian High school degree and a license respectively. And to top this, 80% of the jobs get filled through networking.

My dear fellow migrant, I will recount the story of another immigrant here, not to discourage you, but to prepare you for the odds that you may face, should you chance to fall on the high waves of Canadian job market in the near future:

One Wednesday, I met an Indian lady at the grocery store. She was struggling with her shopping bags when I offered to help. She turned out to be my neighbor and after a few days we met at a nearby coffee shop and began talking about our lives in Canada. She had completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Bombay and had thereafter married a doctor of medicine settled in Canada. Unfortunately, before coming to Canada, she had assumed that her high qualifications would make job hunting in Canada an easy task. However, she was proved wrong by the Canadian job market which could not accommodate her even in the most mundane occupations. At first she tried to take up a teaching  position in schools and colleges. But the lack of Canadian college education and/or a teaching certificate from Toronto District School Board rendered securing a job in the education industry impossible for her. Next she tried getting research oriented jobs and even entry level clerical  positions; but there again she was obstructed. Despite sending out scores of applications, she was never contacted by any employer. Finally she tried getting work at local cafeterias and clothe stores. But even there her lack of experience as a barista or sales person impeded. She always seemed to be either under qualified or over and therefore useless. Hence, after repeated attempts for almost one and half years, she called it quits and took up the best alternative that she could- that of mothering. At the moment she is in her final trimester and doing well by God's grace. Luckily for her Canadian  (born) child, these struggles will remain unknown!

 * Permanent Resident status for Canada, equivalent to Green Card for America