Volunteer Spotlight – Mandana Kamalisarvestani
Meet Mandana Kamalisarvestani!
Volunteer Role/Position(s): Refugee Support Team Leader/Member.
Volunteering Since: 2023.
Languages: Dari/Farsi and English.
“My name is Mandana Kamalisarvestani (a long family name!). I was and am a volunteer in the refugee support team and an interpreter as well. My languages are Farsi/ Dari and English. NCC was the first place where I started my volunteering in Peterborough in the first months of 2023 ( I don’t remember the exact month). We moved from Toronto to Peterborough in the last days of December 2022 after six months of living in Toronto.
Volunteering was an activity that I have done since my youth in different fields more in educating Afghan kids who were refugees in Iran and were deprived of formal education. When I knew about NCC and came to that building to find volunteer opportunities, the NCC staff’s enthusiasm for serving and helping newcomers and refugees grabbed my heart. I talked with the staff for more than one hour and I found out this is a place where I can be useful.”
– Why do you love volunteering at our Centre?
“I like volunteering at NCC because it is multicultural volunteering. I am engaged in real-life challenges of newcomers and refugees and I think I can understand them and make connections with their actual feelings and issues and mine as well.”
– What is one thing you have learned by volunteering with newcomers?
“I learned here about the potentialities of every individual in bringing joy to others through baby steps and small activities that can make changes in lives even for a short time. This joy is something that we all need as we are passing through difficulties.”
– What do you like to do when you are not volunteering?
“The main activity that I will have till Nov. 4th is visiting my mom on Friday and Saturday. This is my activity every week. She lives in Newmarket on her own although she is 85 years old. My husband and I will visit her. We go shopping for her. I sweep her home, make food and try to make joyful hours for her.”