They volunteer for many different reasons and offer vastly different types of skills and services. They include accountants who sit on boards, grandmothers who help in childcare and 10 year-olds who take their pets to senior citizen homes for visits. Someone who is visually impaired may work by phone, another person who is developmentally challenged may tend gardens, and a new Canadian may program computers. Volunteers come from all walks of life and represent a wide cross-section of the Canadian population. Volunteer participation increases with age until about mid-life.
Women are more likely than men to volunteer.
The likelihood of volunteering increases with the level of education 46 per cent of those with a university degree are volunteers. One in four Canadian volunteers comes from a cultural background other than English or French. The rate of volunteering increases with the level of household income full-time workers account for over 75 per cent of Canadian volunteers. More than one quarter of all working-age Canadians volunteer. Volunteers contribute an average of 3.7 hours per week, or 191 hours per year for a combined yearly total of over one billion volunteer hours.