Cindy Clark has taken her love of art and is sharing it with area seniors.
     Clark has been an active community volunteer, including serving on the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce. She is also an avid artist.  For the last five years, she has been doing a volunteer art program for seniors. This is a program that Rose Poulsen seniors coordinator, has organized.
    “It is art day we do on the second Tuesday of the month,” she said. “It was developed for seniors, and it has grown. When we first started there might have been two or three people that came, and we have had as many as 14 this year, so it has gotten bigger.”
  Clark considers herself an artist, but not a trained teacher, however, she is able to put together simple, entertaining programs and uses her skill to deliver it.
    “I plan an art activity we do together, usually it is a painting activity. We make pictures, we talk and we have become a real social group of people that get together. I really enjoy it, that’s why I keep doing it.”
    She adds it is a valuable way to keep seniors’ bodies and minds engaged, adding that many are recently widowed.
    “So it was really an outlet for them to come out and be around other people. They had an interest in art, it doesn’t matter if they had any experience,” she said.  
    In some ways, she stumbled into the program. She was asked one time to fill in for another facilitator and has kept with it.
    A couple years ago she encouraged some of the members to become their own art group, and it has worked out. Last year some entered an art show.
    “We put on a really fabulous show in Drumheller last year and we are putting on another this spring they get to enter,” she said
    With some of the funds from their show, they are looking at sponsoring young artists at the schools to go into the shows.
    Like so much volunteer work, it provides Clark with rewards.
    “For me, I love the interaction, I think I have made some friendships along the way, which is valuable. It also inspires my painting,” said Clark. “I may try something different with them, and then when I go home to my studio, it might inspire me to work a little more on  something or stretch my limits.”
    “I also find it fulfilling to be giving back to these people. These are the people that are the community creators before me, so you can draw from their experiences, and I hope we can pass that on to the new painters.”

    Volunteerism is simply freely applying your skills for the betterment of the community. For Bill Wulff, his skill of crunching numbers is helping seniors complete taxes.
    For years Wulff has been volunteering his time to do tax returns for seniors and low-income people in the community. Prior to 2010, when he retired from his position as manager of finance and information systems at the Town of Drumheller, he would do a few simple tax returns for those in need. After his retirement, Family and Community Supports Services (FCSS) set up a program where he could dedicate more time to it.
Before that, he would take the returns home and then come back with them completed. Now leading up to tax time, Wulff sets up in the library on Mondays and seniors can make an appointment to have their taxes done.
        “It became a lot bigger enterprise after that,” he chuckles. “This made it  much easier for me to do it at the library.”
 Often these are simple returns that he is able to complete quickly, as many seniors are not earning income, therefore are not paying taxes.
“The reason that a senior or a low-income person has to get their tax return done is to apply for benefits. If you don’t file your taxes, you don’t get your guaranteed income support supplements, your GST rebate or the Alberta government subsidies,” Wulff explains.
     While leading up to April 30 is his busy time, he finds he is working on them almost year round.
    “If you don’t file by the end of April, your subsidies are cut off at the end of July, so my next big rush is at the end of June,” he said.
    His inspiration to help seniors and low-income residents comes from his desire to make sure they get a fair shake.  
    when he started you had to file manually on paper where he would charge $20. Now a tax return only takes about 15 minutes using computers.
    For a short time, they had signed up with a federal volunteer program, however, it was restrictive to seniors who earned a small amount of income. Tax returns could only be filed under the program in March and April. Because of this, they have opted to do their own program.
    On top of the returns he does at the library, he also takes appointments at Sunshine Lodge and the manors. Annually he completes about 400 tax returns.
    Beyond tax returns, he also volunteers to do audits for local nonprofits, serves on nonprofit boards, volunteers for the MS Walk, and of course, his work at Canada Day lighting up the sky with fireworks.
    He finds value in volunteerism.
“It’s something I enjoy doing. I don’t want to sit at home and get addicted to CNN,” he laughs.
    “It’s giving back to the community, but it is also the sense of accomplishment of helping someone at no cost. It keeps you young, it keeps you active, it keeps your brain turned on.”