Page 48 - 01-Jan-Feb-2025

Jorgia
Moore
Dineen’s mom is 78 and still takes shifts at
the hospital gift shop in St. Thomas, Ont.
“It’s a great way to meet people. It’s a great
way to learn to call on your neighbour to
borrow a cup of sugar.”
She worked in Belmead Community League.
She met her future husband. And, for 17 years,
she’s held various positions in the Meadowlark
Community League, including a four-year
term as president. She also helps with the
Glenwood and West Meadowlark community
leagues.
“When I moved here, I got involved, rather
soon, with the community league, which I
knew nothing of, because we don’t have them
in Ontario,” she recalls. “That’s how I met
people. I went to the moms’ group there [in
Belmead] when I had my first son. That’s how
a group of 10 of us to this day, 21 or 22 years
later, are still together. They are my support
system.
She’s also an active member of the parent
council at Meadowlark Elementary School,
despite the fact her youngest child left
elementary school five years ago. Meadow-
lark teaches programs in English, but also
offers Mandarin immersion programs. So, the
volunteers created a Chinese-themed com-
munity garden, and hope to add a gazebo to
the project. It’s these types of grassroots-led
community initiatives that make a neigh-
bourhood, well, a neighbourhood. She is also
active in Girl Guides.
But Dineen worries she might be part of
a dying breed. We live in a new world where
chats and texts have replaced face-to-face
interaction. People are overworked and don’t
have the same sort of time to give away to
volunteering.
“Every community organization I know
now struggles for volunteers. You get the ‘I’m
too busy’ or the ‘not interested.’ And then
the volunteers you do have are volunteering
for multiple, multiple things and are over-
stretched and overworked. But they still do it
because that’s what they love.”
Yet, at the same time, there is pressure on
community organizations to do more.
“There is a big resurgence with the City
of Edmonton to really start to grow the
membership of the community leagues,
again,” says Dineen. “This, in turn, gets us
back to the old days of block parties and
getting to know your neighbour and talking
over the fence. They want to see if it’s some-
thing that can be revitalized.”
With uber-volunteers like Dineen, maybe
there can be a community-league Renaissance.
by Steven Sandor
48 EDify. JANUARY • FEBRUARY.2548 EDify. JANUARY • FEBRUARY.25