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At MTS Allstream, Ella West is responsible for mitigating risk to our organization by insuring that we meet our customers’ certification requirements. The skills that Ella uses in her day-to-day job are also carried over to her work with the Canadian Red Cross, where she teaches people how to mitigate risk in their own environment. Ella was named the 2006 Volunteer of the Year through the Enterprise Solutions’ My Community program for her dedication to the Canadian Red Cross. In 2006 she spent 750 hours of volunteer time assisting those in need - anytime and anywhere! The previous year was a challenging one for Ella, as she was the Team Leader of a group of five experienced volunteers that went to Sri Lanka for one month to provide Tsunami relief and assistance. While there, her team assessed 29 temporary sites for adequate housing, water resources and food supplies. She also trained the Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteers on how to make future assessments and maintain a statistical database that her team developed in ten provinces of the country - and she did all of this in three different languages! While taking on the leadership role as Master Instructor for the Canadian Red Cross, she also had the task of launching a nationwide training program to ensure that when the time comes, the organization has trained volunteers to provide assistance to those in need. To do this, Ella created a Leadership Guide for all instructors across Canada and managed a team of Instructor Trainers, as well as more than 60 instructors all over the province of Ontario. The National Training program enables the volunteers to respond to disasters from house fires and floods to large scale disasters and international deployments, utilizing a consistent approach across the country. It's no wonder that just recently, in May 2008, Ella was awarded the prestigious ?Order of Red Cross?. For more than two decades, she has been a leader and inspiration to staff and volunteers alike at the Red Cross. She officially sits as Chair of the Disaster Management Advisory Committee (DMAC), is the only volunteer sitting on the National Training Working Group and is the sole Master Instructor Trainer for the Disaster Management Training Program. We are proud of all of our employees who make contributions like this to our communities - it?s this type of giving and committed attitude that makes our people one our main differentiators.? |