Newcomers are critical to strengthening and growing Canada’s volunteer ecosystem. Here are four common barriers and how to make newcomers feel welcome.

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Smita Akale’s first volunteer position, at the age of 16, involved working with the children of sex workers in Mumbai’s Kamathipura red-light district. Her job was to give these children food, play with them, and eventually help them enroll in school. 

Akale is a model volunteer. Her resume includes stints at nursing homes, mental health clinics, a life coaching institute, and with special needs children as a school councillor. She speaks English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, and Gujarati, and says she understands Punjabi, Kashmiri, Tamil, Malayalam, and Telugu. When she arrived in Canada in 2019, on a visitor’s visa, she was determined to pitch in right away. None of the Canadian organizations she contacted wanted her. 

“If you are on a closed work permit, that’s OK,” Akale says. “If you are a student, that’s OK. But if you are on a visitor visa, they would not let you.” Tourists aren’t explicitly prohibited from volunteering, but some organizations also don’t like taking on volunteers they are unable to screen through a criminal record check. 

Akale arrived in Canada with the intent on applying for permanent residency. But as someone who arrived on a visitor visa, she was unable to work, and couldn’t find any volunteer positions. For a year, while she waited for her PR to arrive, she began giving free advice on Facebook to newcomers. 

Many newcomers see volunteering as a valuable way to settle into Canadian society. Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, says his organization recently asked the newcomers they serve what they would need to feel a greater sense of belonging. “Much to my personal surprise, a large number of them said volunteering, as a way of building professional networks, having a resume item, and building a social network close to where they live,” he says. 

Yet there are barriers throughout the volunteer process. According to Volunteer Canada, an advocacy organization, about 38 per cent of newcomers volunteer every year. By contrast, around 45 per cent of Canadian-born residents do. But when newcomers do participate, they put in an average of 162 hours each year, 10 hours more than their home-born counterparts. Language barriers, cultural differences, and the stress of moving to a new country all affect the ability of newcomers to volunteer. 

Newcomer volunteers, volunteer coordinators, and other experts say there are several ways to overcome these barriers  — and flexibility is key: 

BARRIER: Newcomers may not be comfortable in English or French 

Roughly 69 per cent of newcomers speak a mother tongue that isn’t English or French, according to the 2021 Canadian census. Some of them can speak Canada’s two official languages, but others may not be comfortable, or fluent at all. Many refugees, such as those coming from Afghanistan or Ukraine, come from countries where English or French are rarely taught. 

“Language is such a barrier for settlement for so many people,” says Holly Jones, a volunteer resource coordinator at Mosaic, one of Canada’s largest settlement and employment service organizations. Yet it doesn’t dampen enthusiasm for volunteering. Jones says she receives as many as 10 to 15 volunteer applications per day. After all, volunteering gives newcomers a great opportunity to practice their English or French. 

The easiest way for non-profits and charities to break the language barrier for newcomer volunteers is to realize that anyone who speaks languages besides English or French is a huge asset, even if their fluency in Canada’s official languages needs work.

“There are many social service agencies and cultural organizations that would love to be able to serve their prospective beneficiaries in Punjabi or Mandarin or whatever the case may be,” Bernhard says. 

Jones says a simple fix for any organization is including a description of the minimum language skills required in a volunteer posting. But ultimately, Akale says, volunteers who care about what they’re doing will be able to make themselves understood to an organization. If all else fails, Google Translate can bridge the gap. “It probably might take a little extra time,” Akale says. “But it’s worth it, because the experience that they bring, the knowledge that they bring, and the skills that they bring are far greater than the hurdle of the language.” 

BARRIER: Newcomers may be too busy with paid work

Relocating to Canada is an expensive proposition for many newcomers. International students pay around $36,100 in tuition every single year as undergraduates, according to Statistics Canada data from 2022. Newcomers who arrive with work permits need Canadian work experience, fast. Between work and school, many newcomers don’t have a lot of time to volunteer. “As much as someone even might want to, it almost comes to the point where they can’t,” says Tejinder Singh Sidhu, president of the World Sikh Organization of Canada. 

But not everyone is in this situation, and non-profits and charities shouldn’t write off newcomers as too busy to volunteer. Bernhard says there is a big misconception that all newcomers are overworked and struggling to learn English or French, write a resume, or access social services. “We forget that there are many who are not,” he says. “The question for them is: are they going to find satisfaction in Canada? Are they going to find a network? Are they going to find a job at the right level of benefit?” 

Creating volunteer programs designed to help newcomers build solid job and networking opportunities is one way to bridge both needs. The World Sikh Organization of Canada runs a Sikh Mentorship Program that pairs newcomer or Canadian-born Sikh students with Sikh mentors who expand their professional networks. “From there, we’ve been able to get a lot of volunteers because they become aware of the organization,” Sidhu says. “I’ve had someone say they feel indebted to the organization for helping them make that connection.” 

Meanwhile the Institute for Canadian Citizenship is putting together what Bernhard calls the Newcomer Accelerator Program, an initiative to connect newcomers between the ages of 18 and 30 with high-quality volunteer programs relevant to their professional or personal goals. As participants volunteer, they’ll not only be matched with a mentor, but also receive the Institute’s Canoo pass, a perk that gives free access to over 1,400 parks, museums, science centres, and other attractions. 

After putting in 120 hours of service, volunteers will receive a reference letter they can use for future job opportunities. “Part of this is about sweetening the deal. Part of this is about education,” Bernhard says. “And part of this is about providing the other benefits that newcomers are seeking through volunteering, perhaps in a more explicit and intentional way than you would do with someone who has stronger bearings in society.” 

BARRIER: Organizations can treat volunteer positions like jobs

Many of the volunteer opportunity listings on websites like CharityVillage look an awful look like job postings. They have rigidly-defined roles and responsibilities, call for previous relevant experience, and sometimes mandate specific time commitments. To Akale, the latter was totally new. “When I volunteered in India, I was never asked for a commitment,” she says. “If you like something, you are going to make time for it and you are going to do it, right?”

Jones says a lot of Canadian organizations are still looking for long-term volunteer commitments, mainly out of habit. “That is just not the reality any longer,” she says. Older generations of volunteers would be with the same organization for years or decades, and that doesn’t happen anymore. “People’s schedules change, and our lives change so rapidly,” Jones says. 

To make matters more complicated, volunteer positions that involve interaction with elderly people or children require police checks to ensure candidates don’t have a history of abuse. Newcomers may not have been in Canada long enough to generate a police record of any kind: the exact time can vary between six months to a year. Aubrey Mendoza, coordinator of volunteer strategy for United Way BC – Lower Mainland Region’s non-profit sector portfolio, suggests organizational leaders be as flexible as possible with newcomer volunteers.

These volunteers could potentially start in roles that don’t involve contact with elderly people or children, she says, then be moved to those positions once they’ve met the qualifications to do so. To Mendoza, there are “a lot of things we can do as an organization to eliminate those barriers.”

BARRIER: Volunteering outside of Canada may look very different 

Every culture and religion on the planet has some concept of volunteerism. For Sikhs, seva, or the act of selfless service to others with nothing expected in return, is crucial to their faith. In the Qu’ran, Muslims are encouraged to share their time to help humanity. Yet a newcomer’s concept of volunteerism can differ from the volunteer opportunities offered in Canada. 

“Here in Canada, it can be anything,” Jones says. “But in many other parts of the world, it’s very limited as to what it means for somebody to be able to go and volunteer. It’s really limited to social welfare with the homeless, poverty, and things like that.” If newcomers aren’t told that Canadian volunteerism can include helping out with a sports organization, Jones says, they might not seek out these opportunities. “They don’t know that these organizations are necessarily looking for volunteers,” she says. 

Explaining how volunteerism works in Canada, and differs from volunteering in other countries, is an important part of making newcomers comfortable. So is unpacking the difference between volunteerism and unpaid exploitation. Megan Conway, president and CEO of Volunteer Canada, was told by a newcomer that coming to Canada and working for free can seem like a completely foreign concept.  

“We don’t want to see newcomers being exploited through unpaid work,” Conway says.

“I think it’s around ensuring that newcomers have the right level of awareness and support when they’re navigating systems they may not be familiar with.” 

Can newcomers help address Canada’s volunteer shortage?

Conway says a strategy of welcoming newcomers into volunteer roles might help, if it is customized to the needs of local communities. But depending on one demographic, like newcomers, won’t solve the volunteer shortage. To Conway, thinking of newcomers as the saviour of volunteerism misses a much broader problem.

“It’s not just about needing volunteers to fix the hole,” she says.

“We need to figure out how we create a country where there’s a place for everyone to participate, and where we recognize everyone’s gifts and skills.”

This requires investment on the part of non-profits and charities, not only to ensure volunteers feel welcome, but so they can carry out service.

Of course, newcomers will always find a way to help. The barriers Akale faced trying to volunteer didn’t stop her from finding her own way to give back during her first year in Canada. As she succinctly put it, “I can’t sit quiet.” 

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