Page 88 - Book about Friendship and Future.Stories of Volunteers.

Vera Golenok

KFC Lenta Transportnaya
Novokuznetsk

I have been working in a KFC restaurant as a Deputy Director.
I started my career in August 2015 in the position of an ordinary
employee – a shift member. I have never thought I would align
my life with volunteering, if not one “issue”!
When I was 12, my beloved mom died. This loss became
a hard challenge for me: problems with studies and communicat-
ing with other teenagers, isolation and social fears. When I was
20, I started working in KFC while getting a higher education. My
life got some new colors. The work gave me the opportunity to
feel myself part of a large family – a family with a big heart, and
I opened up. Each month or two we attended various volunteer
events: helping animals, collecting some clothes for the Senior
People’s Home and Babies’ Home, participating in the Marathon
of Good Deeds. My heart was filling with love and delight be-
cause I could help and that this help was really needed!
After some time, my career started developing and I got less
free time. Volunteering shifted to the background, and then got
forgotten at all. I got plunged into routines and ordinary stuff.
I had no desire or intention to do anything. I was experiencing
constant tiredness and emotional vacuum. After living that life
for 2 years, I was invited to be a leader of volunteering in our
city. I started participating without a particular desire saying,
“Someone has to do this job as well”. But just after the first event
it seemed that I got back the vigor and the desire to live, love
and feel, the desire to drive forward and achieve new heights. My
world was changed by one girl from an orphanage. I will never
forget her eyes and her arms stretched to me.
When you become a volunteer, your life changes, to the best!
Behind our problems and issues there is always another hidden
world – a world of kindness that you share with others and get
back thousands times more!