Snow Angel Announcement at the Thunder Bay 55 Plus Centre - CJ Goater

The Snow Angels Program partners homebound seniors in the community with a volunteer to help them with snow removal on their property.

The main goal is to ensure there is safe access to and from the house.

Thunder Bay 55 Plus Centre is now in its second year of running the event, and they are looking for volunteers.

“It is a high need for people and we have a waitlist close to 100 people looking for this service, so it is definitely something people are looking for,” explained Tessa Hettrick, Volunteer Coordinator at the centre.

“We have about 40 active volunteers and thankfully a number of those volunteers have been matched to one or more addresses, so if there is a couple of people in their neighbourhood they will do more than one house, so that’s a huge benefit too us, so we are looking to hopefully match a lot more (volunteers) to reach that 100 person goal,” added Hettrick

The program is a great way for high-school students to get their volunteer hours, “it is very flexible as in within 48 hours of a 3cm snow we ask them to go shovel and we will be giving them time from when they leave their home to go to shovel as well as when they get back. We understand some of them may be walking around the neighbourhood so it will be an awesome way to get their volunteer hours.”

There are onboarding and orientation sessions at the end of the month and anyone aged 16 and older can reach out to the centre to get involved.