Appreciating our Volunteers and Recruiting for 2016

By Kimberly Moynahan, Core Team & Interim Editorial Manager

It’s been a quiet month here on the Borealis Blog. Except for a few announcements, we decided to take a short hiatus from outreach over the holidays and give our volunteers a break. We’re just now getting back into the swing of things.

As many of you already know, Science Borealis is a volunteer organization. Between 25 and 30 people generously donate their time each month to keep the Borealis engine humming along smoothly.

Together we blog, Tweet, put out a newsletter, answer emails, manage various teams and initiatives, recruit new volunteers, maintain the website, and oversee and develop the business.

Running a volunteer organization is tricky. By definition our teams are made up of some of the most committed people out there – people who signed on because they believe in our cause. They are willing to invest their time and energy to help us succeed.

But also, by definition, their work for us is not – cannot be — their first priority. It has to come after paid work and other obligations. That’s something that we try to be mindful of here.

We understand that our volunteers span the Canadian time zones and sometimes beyond. We respect that they have families, are in school, are teaching, are immersed in field or lab work, are trying to complete their PhDs, and/or have their own, more pressing, deadlines.

And that makes us appreciate all the more that they stay on and continue to work with us.

So at this time, on behalf of Science Borealis, we’d like to thank all of our volunteers who helped make Science Borealis successful in 2015. We couldn’t have come this far without everyone’s help.

Our roster is about to be updated, but the 2015 list of volunteers is here. By way of support, we encourage you to follow them on Twitter and check out their blogs.

And finally, if you would like to join our 2016 lineup, we have openings!

Editorial Team – Management Openings

• Editorial Manager
• Team Coordinator [CLOSED]
• Borealis Blog Editor [CLOSED]

Subject Editors –

• Chemistry
• Biology / Life Sciences (co-editor)
• Science in Society

Outreach Team –

• Social Media Volunteer (help with Twitter, Facebook outreach)

So if you have 1-2 hours a week you’d like to share with us, drop us a line at contact@scienceborealis.ca and tell us how you think you can help. We’d love to hear from you.