Poverty Advocacy Nanaimo

This past week, PAN successfully recruited five new, much needed, volunteers.
Our growing team brings me joy for several reasons. Of course, the obvious one is that we can better support the community with a larger team. We now have 15 volunteers!

However, there are two other reasons for gratitude.

First, I am a huge proponent of the idea of “Nothing for us without us”.
All five of our newest volunteers are low-income, like me. Four of them are subsisting on disability payments, through PWD (Provincial Disability), CPP-D, or private long-term disability.  (The direct connection between disability and poverty is a post for another day.) My vision for PAN has always been to collect and represent the voices of people living in poverty in Nanaimo, amplifying their experiences so that we can share a proven road map for low-income survival. These new team members will contribute to this vision.

Second, as I stated above, four of the newest volunteers are being supported by disability payments. We already have other team members who are also on disability, or income assistance. There is sometimes an idea that floats around that people who are receiving disability or welfare payments are lazy, or that we don’t have any interest in making significant contributions. I know that this assumption is incorrect, and seeing the eagerness of these new volunteers to get involved and help others is a true rejection of those negative stereotypes.

We also have a number of PAN volunteers from other, varied walks of life, and I value every single one of them. We all have something to contribute. I just wanted to take a moment to highlight a group of people who can sometimes be overlooked.

-Sarah
Founder and Executive Director