π΅πππππππ π½ππππππππ πΎπππ | π¨ππππ 19β25, 2026
There’s a moment, and most of us have had it, when we look around at our community and feel something stir. A neighbour struggling with their groceries. A child without a backpack. A senior sitting on a bench with a few too many shopping bags around them. And in that moment, something quiet and human rises up: I could help with that.
That impulse – that small, generous stirring – is where volunteerism begins.
This week is National Volunteer Week in Canada, and this year carries particular weight. The United Nations has designated 2026 as the International Year of Volunteers, and Volunteer Canada’s national theme, Ignite Volunteerism, is a call to rekindle something that has always lived at the core of communities like ours.
Here in Northumberland County, we know that call well.
A Movement More Than 135 Years in the Making
The roots of United Way stretch back to 1887, when a group of people in Denver, Colorado looked at the suffering around them and decided to coordinate their care, to stop working in silos and start working together. It was, at its heart, a volunteer effort. People deciding that community wasn’t something that happened to them. It was something they built.
By the mid-twentieth century, United Way chapters had taken root across North America. United Way Northumberland has been part of this community since 1969 – over 55 years of connecting people who need with people who have the capacity to show up.
The symbol hasn’t changed. Those hands, reaching toward each other, have always meant the same thing: the door is open. Come in. We’ll figure it out together.
What a Volunteer Looks Like
We sometimes imagine volunteers as people with vast reserves of free time. But that’s rarely the story.
Volunteers in Northumberland look like the group who gathered last fall to stuff 850 backpacks β everything from JK to Grade 12 β so that children could walk into a new school year feeling ready. They look like the board members who give their evenings and their expertise to ensure this organization stays rooted in the community it serves. They look like the people who show up every year for our Day of Caring, flooding the county with energy and generosity and muddy boots.
They look like someone who answered the phone, showed up at a table, swept a step, planted a seed, fetched a bag of groceries.
Volunteering doesn’t ask for perfection. It asks for presence.
A Crossroads, and an Invitation
Across Canada, volunteerism is at a crossroads. The hours Canadians give to charitable organizations have declined significantly in recent years, and the need has never been greater. Organizations like ours feel that gap every day.
But we also know this: when someone asks what can I do to help?, the answer is never nothing. And when they don’t know where to start, they often look for a familiar symbol, something that says this is a safe place, a welcoming place, a place that knows how to receive what you have to give.
That’s what we try to be.
Ignite Volunteerism isn’t just a theme. It’s a recognition that the spark is still there – in individuals, in communities, in places like Northumberland County where people still know their neighbours’ names and shovel each other’s walks without being asked.
If you’ve been thinking about getting involved – now is the time. The door is open. It always has been.
Thank You
To every volunteer who has given their time to United Way Northumberland, to our partner agencies, to our programs, to this community: thank you. You are not a line item in a report. You are the reason any of this works.
You are the hands that hold us.
Interested in volunteering with United Way Northumberland? Reach out to us, we’d love to find a way to put your heart to work.
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