Grow Your Impact with Volunteers

Bettina Ford

For the past 17 years Bettina has been employed by the Community Sector Council Newfoundland and Labrador (CSC NL). She provides training on non-profit governance and management and delivers workshops to help organizations in the non-profit and public sectors plan for and engage people in volunteering. Bettina assists with program design and informs research and policy development for the community-based sector. An accomplished keynote speaker and presenter at conferences, she is a skilled facilitator who has worked with leaders province-wide, bringing people together to plan, collaborate and build communities.

She is no stranger to the volunteer sector, having served two terms on Gander town council in her twenties and this fall, after a 24-year hiatus, was elected Deputy Mayor. While her history of community involvement is vast, most relevant is her recent participation in a local, staged production of The Vagina Monologues to raise money for Cara Transition House.

Union House Arts

Union House Arts (UHA) is a community art space in Historic Port Union. UHA is committed to supporting work being produced by artists and craftspeople in Newfoundland and Labrador and around the world through place-specific dialogues and collaborative programming. Founded in 2016 by a small team of volunteers, UHA officially opened the doors of its gallery, studios, and community space in June 2019 in a restored heritage building owned by the Coaker Foundation. UHA aims to build a thoughtful space for community residents and artists to work and share; to expand ideas about what art can be, how and where it can be shown, and to create an environment that is accessible to people of all experiences and educations. The space is experimental in nature with a focus on place-based programming, knowledge building, and sharing.

NL Folk Arts Society

The Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Arts Society is getting ready to mount the iconic 48th annual NL Folk Festival this summer in Bannerman Park in St. John’s. Each year, over 300 volunteers come together to handle everything from audience relations to coordinating airport pickups and drop-offs – and everything in between. Some of our volunteers have been assisting us for over thirty years! And we recruit new folk lovers every season. While the organization now has a paid office staff and uses many contractors for tent set-up and sound, we still rely heavily on volunteers to pull off an event of this magnitude. Why do they do it? It’s simple – they believe in preserving our traditions and culture, while welcoming established and emerging folk artists from far and wide.

St. Gabriel’s Hall

Stephanie will share her experience working with St. Gabriel's Hall on the Burin Peninsula to recruit and manage volunteers for a day-long St Patrick’s celebration. She will discuss the planning and implementation steps taken to find and engage individuals, in a huge variety of tasks, for family activities, musical performances and an adult dance at this historic facility.