National Volunteer Week 2021
Celebrating by featuring one of our awesome volunteers: Nick Asapu volunteers with Ricky Clark
Ricky:
Nick has been volunteering with me for about a year and a half. During this time, we have been able to make a connection in which we have equal opportunities to share our interests and hobbies with each other.
He is a lot of fun, and I really enjoy his company because we have a lot of similar interests, like sharing a love of sports! Nick has put a lot of effort into his volunteer work, and has helped us find ways to connect and spend time together, which has been very successful.
COVID has definitely impacted our volunteer sessions, but we’ve been able to play some iPad games over Zoom. Nick has made it easy for us to stay connected during this time and I’m very happy about that.
During National Volunteer Week, I would like to say thank you to all the volunteers out there who are still making it work during the pandemic. The only thing that we can give someone is our time, and volunteers give not only their time but also their hearts.
Thank you Nick!
Nick:
What prompted you to volunteer with us?
I initially heard about PHSS through a doctor from my previous volunteer work and she spoke greatly about the work that PHSS does and highly recommended that I consider volunteering. I have been volunteering with PHSS since September 2019, so about a year and a half now.
How has volunteering for you and Ricky changed with COVID?
The thing that has changed the most is that I haven’t seen Ricky in person since COVID began. So, like you would imagine this was a unique experience, unlike any other volunteer work I’ve done before, and this also came with unique challenges that I’ve never faced either. For example, as all our interactions are online, technical difficulties made it problematic at times.
How have you adapted through Zoom to be able to continue to volunteer with Ricky and stay safe?
Zoom has been a great tool that has allowed me to continue to volunteer with Ricky. Before the pandemic, Ricky and I would often chat about sports, music, and life while playing games on his tablet. So, as you can imagine the introduction of COVID made this somewhat difficult in the beginning. However, we found that we could continue chatting through zoom and zoom has a great feature that allows me to share my screen on my tablet, which allowed us to play games on the tablet like before.
Anything else you would like to share about volunteering at PHSS and how this experience has impacted you?
Before volunteering with PHSS, one of my goals was to gain valuable experience for my future career as a physician, and I feel like I have achieved that. Along the way I feel that I gained a friend in Ricky and that’s something I will cherish much more than the experience that I’ve gained.
