Hello, thank you for participating in the Volunteer Victoria Stage Based Volunteering survey.

As we move through stages in our lives - from home to school, busy careers and supporting family, and on to retirement, traveling, learning and grand-parenting - we experience many changes in our energies, interests, motivations, and abilities. Sometimes, we speed up and sometimes we slow down. Sometimes we take on more, sometimes less. The changes may be gradual, as in aging, or abrupt, as in moving homes or having an injury or illness.

Changes may affect our time, readiness, or ability to engage in activities we enjoy, such as volunteering in our communities. Older adults are very important community volunteers; they have valuable interests, skills, knowledge and time to share with others. Often, community service organizations could not function well without them.

The Stage Based Volunteering Project is exploring how, as adults over the age of 50, life changes may affect our volunteering. For example, we may find grand-parenting or other family care-giving responsibilities take priority at times. Or we may find that changes in our hearing or vision, or movement limitations present new challenges to volunteer activities we have been doing for some time. This project seeks insights into how such changes affect volunteering experience, as well as how community service organizations may provide supports to accommodate older adult volunteers experiencing such changes. Our aim is to find ways to support older adults' continued contributions, as they wish and are able, through community volunteer activities.

Completion of the survey is voluntary and you may choose to answer all, some, or none of the questions. You may stop the survey at anytime. All of the information we collect through the survey will be collated and a report will be published in March 2017. If you have questions about this survey or Volunteer Victoria's Stage Based Volunteer Project please contact Ashley at 250.386.2269 or e-mail volunteer@volunteervictoria.bc.ca 

We thank you for participating in our survey. Your feedback is important.