Why I volunteer: Ann Walsh

Ann Walsh spent close to 30 years as a French immersion teacher, working with kids from grade 1 to 6. She retired in 2003 and began a part-time job teaching school groups in workshops at the Toronto Zoo.
She is passionate about travel to Africa, and has been there six times, most recently in November. “Some trips have been ‘tourist’ and others have been ‘volunteer,'” she says. She has also visited Brazil, Costa Rica, Belize, and much of Europe, living in Switzerland for a while.
“My major interest is photography – I rarely go anywhere without a camera or two,” she says. When she’s not on the road, she loves to curl up with a good mystery, a glass of wine and a warm fire.
Ann has been volunteering in the WWF-Canada head office for six years, stuffing envelopes, writing holiday wishes on cards, making phone calls, and doing computer research for various teams. She worked closely with our photo maven Patricia Buckley, assisting her in changing over our photo catalogues from slide-based to digital.
“I always enjoy coming into the WWF office – everyone is friendly and supportive and there is always a helping hand should that be needed,” Ann says. “There is also independence too, and you never feel that someone is looking over your shoulder making sure you follow instructions!
“WWF does an amazing job of calling attention to the plights of the natural world and our responsibility for those plights, as well as for redressing them, and therefore it needs to be supported as often and as well as I can… Volunteers are essential to any organization that wants to make a difference. It’s important to let ordinary, little people be part of the process, and important to get some of the mundane, not-so-interesting grunt work accomplished so the ‘real’ WWF people can get on with the important, world-saving stuff!
“I have to admit that I am really at heart a pessimist when it comes to the future of life on earth – but that will never make me stop trying to make it a little better in some way.”

Ann at Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, with two hippos in the background (c) Ann Walsh