Volunteers never stop

Normally, Our People is a profile of one significant person in the community. This instalment is a two-for-one special special featuring Helen Kieren and Vi Oko, co-winners of the Volunteer Citizen of the Year Award, which was handed out on Saturday.

Helen Kieran is like most Arden Theatre volunteers: she prefers to stay behind the scenes or just off stage, never in the limelight on centre stage.

That would explain why her win at the Volunteer Citizen of the Year Awards (along with co-winner Vi Oko) put her somewhat out of her element. She was at a loss for words at the time, but by Monday was able to verbalize her perspective.

"I had a good weekend," she said, still understated, but with an audible smile, if such a thing is possible.

Kieran taught junior and senior high students in England near her native Ireland before coming to Canada. The 74-year-old then became an elementary school teacher in Legal, retiring after 25 years of service. Despite Saturday's win, being a teacher was her greatest accomplishment, she said.

"I really did enjoy teaching," she said. "They were really just such neat kids."

She said her former students, now grown adults, still bump into her sometimes on the street.

"They recognize me, but I don't always recognize them," she laughed.

She decided to get into volunteering as a way of meeting people and still giving back to the community. The Arden Theatre was first on her list because she loves the performing arts. She says she takes the same enthusiasm to her work there as she did at the front of the classroom.

"I just love working there. It's been a really great experience."

Kieran also gives back by helping out various health-related charities (like the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Terry Fox Run, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society) with fundraising events. She was also on the first executive board of the St. Albert Retired Teachers Association back in 1997, an organization that she is still involved with to this day.

Kieran has also made the International Children's Festival a priority on her annual calendar. This week she's helping out with the orientation for the volunteers of this year's edition, starting on May 28.

When she isn't busy with all her volunteer commitments, Kieran is learning how to make wood carvings of birds from Edmonton's Hugh Achison. She also enjoys a unique art form from Asia, something that she picked up at a local seniors' centre.

"I'm doing bird carving. I took that as a hobby shortly after I retired. I also like to do Washi Chigirie. It's a Japanese art – tearing paper. It's a special kind of paper and you make pictures with it. It looks almost like a painting when it's finished."

Just as it is with guiding volunteers, Kieran really knows how to bring out the best in the art forms that she's interested in: sometimes it's just a matter of chipping or removing the unnecessary pieces in order for the beauty to shine through.

Vi Oko

Vi Oko would otherwise have spent Saturday morning quite easily occupied helping out various local sports groups like she has done for four decades. Instead, she was at the ceremony for the Volunteer Citizen of the Year Award. The 69-year-old former Edmonton elementary teacher was one of the two co-winners of the big prize but that hasn't changed who she really is.

"I don't even have time to think about that," she sighed, far too busy with several other projects on the go. "You just carry on."

On Monday she was in Barrhead running a cribbage tournament. On Tuesday she was at the John Beedle Centre at the St. Albert Botanic Park in advance of the commencement of this year's Little Sprouts program.

She said that, if it wasn't for a move to St. Albert more than 40 years ago, she might never have even gotten started on this path of volunteering. As a mother of two, she found herself in the right position at the right time.

"If I had stayed in Edmonton, I might not have gotten involved. I moved to St. Albert and very soon realized I needed good child care. There was an ad in the paper about a meeting for a day-care centre and I went. I became a volunteer mom before there were such things," she laughed.

Oko said her greatest accomplishment was being involved in the establishment of the St. Albert Day Care Centre.

"I had no idea that I could possibly even become involved in something at that level. Before you knew it, I was overseeing the building process. I was meeting with the city manager and the fire hall and we designed a building."

When she isn't busy with her various volunteer chores (that also involve the retired teachers' associations of St. Albert, Edmonton and Alberta, plus the Breakfast for Learning program), Oko can be found either in the garden or babysitting her grandkids. Sometimes, it's both.

"It's taken awhile but I love working in the garden," she said. "The little grandchildren know that. Right from little, when I would look after them … they were in the dirt with me."