Every April at VISTE we celebrate National Volunteer Appreciation Month. To kick off our appreciation month this year we recently recognized a volunteer who has served with us for 18 years! JoAnn Schirm started volunteering for VISTE in 2003 and has been delivering hot meals to clients every Tuesday and Thursday ever since. She has been delivering to some of her clients for almost 10 years. Her service amounted to over 1,800 days, 4,500 hours and almost 20,000 hot meals delivered!
Unfortunately for VISTE JoAnn decided to retire this month and we knew we had to recognize this special woman in a special way. So how does an organization thank a volunteer whose incredible service to our clients and community spans almost two decades? On her last day of service with us we gave her the highest honor a VISTE volunteer can receive, VISTE’s President’s Award.
The President’s Award has only been given out three times before, and when we presented the award to JoAnn it was striking to hear her statistics read out loud. What was even more telling was when JoAnn said “Well, I never thought about it like that.” It was as if she was even shocked by how much she had accomplished and how much of an impact she had made throughout the years.
Just one person can really do so much! At VISTE we feel that recognizing JoAnn was the perfect way to kick off VISTE’s Volunteer Appreciation Month. We love and appreciate ALL of our wonderful VISTE volunteers. Whether you volunteer a day, a year, or more, your selfless service to our mission is incredible and allows us to continue to help the community we serve. We are Volunteers in Service to the Elderly – we truly couldn’t do it without you, and we THANK YOU from the bottom of our VISTE green hearts!
“No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop