Volunteer Spotlight: John Petrie
Meet John Petrie. John has been volunteering with Habitat for Humanity Halton-Mississauga in our ReStore for two 1and a half years.
John says he began volunteering after his working situation changed, and he wanted to do something useful with his time.
“I’ve always been kind of interested in public housing, we have a lot of poverty in this country and I’ve been paid a good salary for years, so I thought I should start looking at how I could apply it,” said John.
John decided to donate his time to Habitat for Humanity Halton-Mississauga for a number of reasons, but one that tipped the balance was that Habitat for Humanity doesn’t spend much money on itself.
“Most of the money that comes in goes to a good cause, so I was very happy with that,” he said.
When asked how his first day went, John smiled and said, “They had me putting tiles, here there and everywhere, and I couldn’t figure out what the mess was.” he said. “After a while I figured out how the place works, and it works mostly on common sense.”
And for the last two and a half years, John has helped make our ReStore feel like home to the people that walk through its doors.
There are many reasons volunteers keep coming back to Habitat for Humanity, but John narrowed it down to two: “Selfishly, I get the pleasure of interacting with a bunch of people, and I enjoy that – I think it helps that we have engaging people here,” He said. “But I think over the longer term it’s to give back to the community.”
Through his time at the ReStore, John says it became apparent to him how much of our inventory has been given new life instead of being sent to a landfill.
“I’m glad people know that this place is here, so they can bring stuff to sell back into the community,” he said. “This store serves a very useful function.”
Thank you John for all your hard work over the last two and a half years, we look forward to working with you for many years to come!
