Germaine Chau and Lois Pawl
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Germaine and Lois were early volunteers who helped make ELLA the organization it is today. They first met through ELLA, and their collaboration has led to an enduring friendship.
Lois began her learning journey through the university extension program and naturally continued with ELLA. She began her volunteer journey in 2007 as a member of the Administration Committee. Her responsibilities included telephone registrations—handled personally from the ELLA office—at a time when systems were simple and entirely volunteer-driven.
Germaine joined ELLA shortly after retiring in 2009, when the organization was still in its formative years but already experiencing growing enrolment, and began volunteering in 2010. As she recognized the need for better coordination of classes and more student support, she joined ELLA’s first Program Implementation Committee as Committee Chair in 2011.
Under Germaine’s leadership, an impressive range of supports was introduced—many of which remain in place today. These included assembling and printing the course guide; processing registration on a single computer and later to using Eventbrite; monitoring course registration; working with the University Faculty of Extension to assign appropriate classrooms and with instructors to determine course supply needs; training class hosts; as well as creating student name tags that also listed their classes and room numbers. Additional initiatives included hiring and supervising a part-time student assistant and creating thank-you cards. Germaine also noted how fortunate she was to work alongside a group of eager and capable volunteers.
Having seen a similar model elsewhere, Germaine also recognized the value of an Ambassador program for ELLA. She recruited Lois and Mary Anne King (another early volunteer) to lead this initiative. Ambassadors were trained and given a list of duties which range from being welcoming to new members—identified by red dots on their name tags—to more specific duties such as using counters for noon-hour presentations and staffing the information desk. The Ambassador program remains an integral part of ELLA.
Today, both Lois and Germaine continue to take classes. They believe ELLA has thrived, at least in part, because it makes lifelong friends as well as lifelong learners.
They describe ELLA as a welcoming, friendly community—and even shared an anecdote about its possible accidental beginnings. Apparently, some of the earliest members overheard a washroom conversation 25 years ago, about the upcoming cancellation of the former ELLA program run by the Faculty of Extension and decided that something needed to be done to create a replacement!
[ Interviewed by Elizabeth Luchko ]