Ontario Volunteer Service Award Recipient

In 2007, SCAW Volunteer Harolyn Panetta received the Ontario Volunteer Service Award, nominated by the Retired Teachers of Ontario, for twenty years of volunteer service in the community, overseas, and especially in developing countries.

This was for working with teachers and school principals in Uganda, Ghana and Liberia as a volunteer and as a volunteer tour leader. Harolyn has led more than thirty groups of teachers to destinations around the globe: China, India, South Africa, South America, Australia/New Zealand, Europe, the Far East (Thailand, Hong Kong), and one tour around the world. All of this, of course, was volunteer work without one penny in remuneration. She says "It was a real pleasure and I would do it again in a heartbeat."

She and her husband celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary this past year. She tells us about how they celebrated: "We thought we would just send in $1500 (50 bedkits at $30 each = $1500) to SCAW. However, we remembered that we had friends who may not know about SCAW so, along with the money, we sent in fifty names with addresses and had the pictures sent to them. Several of these have since sent a bedkit contribution to SCAW to commemorate birthdays, deaths, graduations, and special occasions."

A gift that keeps on giving and giving.