Winnipeg, Canada, July 28, 2006 -- “I’m used to eating breakfast with a cup of coffee in one hand and a mouse in the other.” This statement typically describes Quebec-based virtual volunteer, Lavlette (Lav) Plourde, Macdonald Youth Services’ (MYS) longest serving Online Volunteer who recently clocked up an amazing 1000 hours of volunteer service.

With Lav consistently maintaining MYS’s Job Board from over 1000 miles away, the power, reach and effectiveness of MYS’s online employment recruiting tool has become evident.

“The best story we can share about the success of our Job Board is this time last year, after Lav did some updating for us, I received a long distance call from Scotland from a young Canadian couple working abroad in this field wishing to come back home to Winnipeg to live after a few years away”, recalled MYS’s Human Resources Officer Philipa Caplan. “They searched our Job Board and found the two recently posted positions. Each applicant had the credentials we required so we interviewed them via phone. They came home in August and we have not looked back since,” Caplan added.

“Plourde’s seven year involvement and over 1000 hours of online volunteer service highlights that if satisfied, online volunteers can be retained for lengthy time periods and make key developmental contributions to the operations of a non-profit or charitable organization”, stated MYS’s Volunteer Co-ordinator/Webmaster Randy Tyler. “Moreover, online volunteers, if screened and assigned appropriately, can be placed in positions of trust even though never seen face-to-face”, continued Tyler.

To read the complete article, written by MYS virtual volunteer Joydeep Chaudhuri, a physician trained in India currently teaching at Midwestern University, Arizona, please visit the following URL now:

http://mys.ca/volunter/voices/voices_11.html

The article is also available as an approximate nine minute narration in both mp3 and Flash formats. Narrated by one of our US-based virtual volunteer voice talents, the files can be downloaded from the following URLs:

.mp3 (64 kbps, 3.91 MB )
www.mys.ca/rss/audio/lp/MYS_1000_Hour_Virtual_Volunteer_64.mp3

.mp3 (128 kbps, 7.82 MB)
www.mys.ca/rss/audio/lp/MYS_1000_Hour_Virtual_Volunteer_128.mp3

.swf (128 kbps, 7.98 MB),
www.mys.ca/rss/audio/lp/MYS_1000_ Hour_Virtual_Volunteer_128.swf

.exe (128 kbps, Flash Audio Projector, 11 MB)
www.mys.ca/rss/audio/lp/MYS_1000_Hour_Virtual_Volunteer.exe

To subscribe to MYS’s Virtual Volunteering News RSS Feed, copy the following URL into your RSS Feed Reader/Aggregator now:

http://www.mys.ca/rss/virtvolnews.xml

To subscribe to MYS's Virtual Volunteering News and Announcements E-Mail List, please see the URL below:

http://www.mys.ca/cgi-bin/media/mail_list.pl

Macdonald Youth Services (MYS), a 76 year-old trusted and respected registered charitable treatment and support agency based in Winnipeg, Canada, provides a variety of innovative and leading programming for thousands of Manitoba's young people on a yearly basis. MYS has been successfully utilizing highly-skilled virtual volunteers from around the globe to enhance their programs and services since 1998.

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