Volunteer

Our community association is run by amazing volunteers and we have lots of opportunity for you to participate – occasionally or regularly. If you are able to help with any of the roles below, please let us know by emailing our secretary who will put you in touch with the right coordinator. pldca.secretary@gmail.com

Help run our Social Events

Our regular social events include the Summer BBQ, Spring social, Winter Potluck.  Beyond that we have had members organize other special events in the past, such as music in the gardens, card nights, movie nights and gatherings to watch the Olympic hockey finals. We invite your ideas and energy on any events you’d like to see happen.   Each of our events takes lots of people to make it happen. If you can help organize, publicize, cook, make coffee & tea, decorate or set up and take down, we’d be very grateful.

Join the Board

We have a board of nine members who cover a variety of responsibilites that make sure that our hall and gardens are taken care of, and that our community becomes a more connected place to live.  Some board members take on specific roles and others are directors at large.  Each director is elected for a two year term, with half of them coming up for election each year. That helps ensure continuity and that knowledge of how things run is not lost.  A person may stay on the board for a maximum of six years before taking at least one year break.  Have a look at our current board members here.  If you are curious about joining the board, please contact our secretary.

Newsletter & Publicity

The PLDCA has a monthly e-newsletter that goes out to our members, and most years also sends out a printed newsletter to all in the V9E area that we cover.  In addition we get word out on local news via social media, old fashioned flyers on mailboxes and a sign at the local gas station. All this takes team work. We could use the following help: join the mailbox flyer team (about 6x/year 9 flyers to put up); design flyers; send us newsletter content; help edit and lay up newsletters;  send current content for social media.  If you can help with any of these tasks please email pldca.communications@gmail.com or message us on our Facebook or Instagram pages.

Hall Maintenance

Our hall is maintained by a mix of volunteers and professionals.  There is a lot to do in any given year and that’s why we always aim to have one board member who is responsible for ensuring regular maintenance is done. We are very fortunate to have Jim Irvine coordinating hall maintenance, but he can’t do it alone. And even if he could, company is always good.   If you can join him on hall maintenance, weekdays or weekends, occasional or regularly, please contact our secretary who will pass on your information.

Gardening

We have garden bees about five times a year. These are often on Sundays and accompanied by coffee and snacks. As you see from the photo, all ages are welcome!  The dahlias in our grounds are grown and cared for by the Victoria Dahlia Society.   If you have ideas for the garden we’d love to hear them. As a volunteer run group the expertise of the group varies over time, and we appreciate those with more knowledge sharing with us.  We aim for gardens that are relatively low maintenance, and bee and butterfly friendly.  Apart from the dahlias, we have to consider that during hot summers we can run low on water, so things we plant now are ideally not needing much water in summer.  Look for our garden bees in the member newsletter and on our social media.

Fundraising

Our association is a registered charity. We have several income streams with event rentals being the largest. In addition we have had regular fundraising events including Art auctions, the Christmas at the Lake craft fair, Country Grocer save-the-tape program, concerts and we accept donations. The PLDCA has benefitted enormously in the past from grants from Saanich, Peninsula Coop and BC Gaming.   Recently, the three garden benches installed were made possible by a Saanich grant. Our next project is making the Hall more accessible and that is something we are looking to raise money for. Could you help?  If you have skills in event organizing, grant applications, or can simply help on setup and take-down of tables, we’d love to hear from you.   Email our secretary.