Volunteer
The Woodland Cultural Centre has a long and rich history of support provided by its volunteers. The Centre is committed to recognizing and supporting the involvement and contribution of volunteers, who enhance the visitor experience and assist in the overall fulfillment of the Centre’s mandate.
Available Opportunities
Niá:wen/Nyá:węh/Thank you for stopping by our volunteer page. As a non-profit organization, we rely on various forms of generosity to support our projects and initiatives. One way people give to Woodland Cultural Centre is through volunteering and sharing their time, skills, and knowledge with us to help in our development and delivery of daily programming in addition to planning of celebrations and special events. Please explore the menu below for more information and to discover the opportunities available.
Our gift shop and front desk are often the first point of contact for guests to the Woodland Cultural Centre. The high-quality products from our gift shop not only supports the Woodland Cultural Centre but also small businesses and artisans from the Six Nations community and other Indigenous communities. Through generous contributions, customers are helping bring to life the rich story of the Hodinohsho:ni people by funding innovative exhibitions and programs. Every purchase plays a role in preserving, promoting, and strengthening Indigenous language, culture, art, and history.
Should you volunteer for this opportunity, daily tasks might include organizing inventory, stocking shelves, displaying merchandise, fulfilling online orders, handling cash, and starting walk-in guests on their self-guided tours of the museum.
The Woodland Cultural Centre Language Department and Resource Centre is dedicated to strengthening, revitalizing, and maintaining First Nations Languages, locally, regionally, and nationally. The Language Department has actively worked for over 35 years with language speakers, learners, Knowledge Keepers, and teachers to produce community resources in our languages. We aim to support grassroots language programs in our communities, and across the Confederacy.
Daily tasks in the Language Department might include, but are not limited to, utilizing a sewing machine, Cricut, and other creative tools to help make merchandise for the department, assisting at social events, and archiving and organizing department materials.
Explore Language Department and Resource Centre Role Description Here
The Woodland Cultural Centre offers a variety of virtual tours, education programs, and workshops that provide interested visitors with the opportunity to learn about an assortment of topics covering the past, present, and future of Southern Ontario’s First Nations Peoples.
Volunteering in the Education Department could see you engaging with tasks such as preparing craft kits and edukits, assisting group facilitation, and providing guidance for individuals partaking in self-guided and virtual tours.
The Operations Department accomplishes the essential work to keep the Woodland Cultural Centre physically running. From maintenance to beautification and everything in between, Operations is the go-to department that makes the Centre an accessible, clean, and attractive place for all who visit.
While volunteering with Operations, you might find several different opportunities to participate in including maintaining property (gardening, landscaping, removing snow), painting and other decorative modifications for gallery installations and general upkeep, and assisting with special events (directing traffic, counting attendees, and setting up and tearing down things like tables, chairs, and tents).
The Woodland Cultural Centre Resource Library offers a wide range of Indigenous-only content that include various amounts of theses, novels, museum studies, exhibition catalogues, magazines, children’s books, newspapers, and so much more.
Our library volunteers might engage with work such as shelving, cataloguing, scanning, and digitizing materials as well as organizing and sorting books, magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and other collections.
Throughout the year, the Woodland Cultural Centre hosts many events like the National Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration, the Indigenous Art Exhibition, the Annual Smoke Dance Competition, and more. We’re always up to something spectacular that preserves, promotes, and strengthens the Hodinohsho:ni people.
Volunteer opportunities depend on the type of event, but some roles might include photographing the event, counting attendees, assisting in set up and tear down, selling snacks, monitoring the gallery, and other duties as needed.
Follow our social media and stay up to date with our calendar for our upcoming events. Indicate on your volunteer application form that you are interested in Special Events, and we will reach out to you when events are upcoming.
Relevant Material
- The Centre will engage volunteers to enrich and complement essential programs according to its mandate. The selection and engagement of volunteers will be conducted in keeping with specific operational procedures, as revised from time to time.
- Working relations with volunteers are governed by applicable WCC policies, including but not limited to the Personnel Policy, Harassment Prevention Policy, etc. The relevant provisions of other legislation such as the Official Languages Act, the Canadian Labour Code, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act also apply, as does the Centre’s health and safety regulations, and/or other agreements.
- As is the case for employees, volunteers are expected to adhere to the same standards of professionalism, along with the terms of the Centre’s Code of Conduct. They are also subject to a personnel security screening and background check before the commencement of their engagement.
- Volunteers are supervised by WCC staff, and do not have the authority to represent the Centre, make contracts for the Centre or make any other commitment on its behalf, without the written consent of the Executive Director. Letters and other communications written by volunteers on the Centre’s behalf must be authorized by a WCC employee of appropriate seniority and authority.
- Volunteers are not a substitute for employees and the WCC does not recruit volunteers to displace employees. A volunteer accepting full or part time paid employment in the Centre shall not be expected to continue his/her voluntary work. The WCC accepts the services of its own staff as volunteers only if the voluntary tasks are offered without coercion, involve assignments entirely outside the scope of the normal employment duties of the staff concerned, and are provided outside their usual working hours.
- The Centre maintains insurance for those who are registered as volunteers with the WCC Human Resources Department. They are insured only for acts within the scope of their activities for the Centre and at the Centre’s direction. The Centre assumes no responsibility for any loss or injury incurred by a volunteer where said loss or injury is incurred through his/her own negligence or through disregard of the Centre’s stated safety and security requirements.
- All written documents, study results, concepts and products developed for the Centre by a volunteer as part of their volunteer assignment are the property of the Centre, unless otherwise stated in a written agreement between the volunteer and the WCC.
- The WCC appreciates and will publicly acknowledge the valuable services provided by volunteers.
Woodland Cultural Centre’s Volunteer Program has been generously funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Contact Information
Phone: 519-759-2650 x 232
Email: frontdesk@woodlandculturalcentre.ca
Volunteer Program Coordinator: Maichina Veri
