With a combined total of almost 6,000 volunteer hours over four years, Centre Wellington District High School students Alan Negrin and Kali Hodgson are an example of what donating time means.
Students in Ontario secondary schools are required to obtain 40 hours of community service in order to graduate and both students went above and beyond.
“I think it’s great that [they]have such high numbers but so different and so [them],” said guidance counselor Linda Adams.
“So we have [Kali] within the building who committed passionately to this community at Centre Wellington and then Alan who has a great connection to the school but he had that big connection where he felt needed and valuable outside of the building.”
Alan Negrin
Negrin, 18, completed his Grade 12 year at Centre Wellington District High School in June and over his four years in high school he accumulated almost 3,250 volunteer hours training National Service Dogs, more specifically dogs that will help someone who has autism or post traumatic stress disorder.
Negrin’s sister is the reason he began training the puppies.
“She wanted to start training dogs and then she heard from a friend, I think, about National Service Dogs … and she kept asking me if I wanted to and I decided one day to try it out,” he said.
Negrin’s family owns Pinetree Pet Care Centre Limited so contact with animals was part of his daily life. He said his family helps with the care of the puppies he trains.
Negrin met the first pup in 2012, a golden retriever he called Google that came into Negrin’s care at just two months old and stayed with him for two years. The dog graduated in 2014. Negrin’s second dog was Quincey, a golden Labrador retriever that became a companion dog and finished his program in May.
Negrin was responsible for caring for the dogs, training them daily and going to specific training sessions about once a week. He trained them to sit, down, stay and he house trained them. He said he got them used to cuddling and having their faces and ears pulled because it was likely they’d go to children.
“I tried to get them to be big stuffed animals essentially, something the child could be comfortable with,” he said.
He also said he trains them in a command called visiting, something the parents can ask of the dog if the child needs reassurance.
“They rest their head on your lap,” he explained. “So they learn if there’s a problem with the child or something to comfort them they learn to put their head on their lap to try to calm them down.”
Once the puppies got older, Negrin started to socialize them. “You can take them out to malls and I usually bring my puppy to school because there’s a lot of people and it gets them used to the environment because most kids with autism are in school so they’ll be in that kind of environment,” Negrin explained.
He said it’s sometimes hard to give the puppies up when their training is complete.
“But you get the thinking that they’re going somewhere where they’re needed and it just makes you feel good and it doesn’t affect you as much, but yeah you do get a little sad when they go,” he said.
He especially loved Google.
“He was a big stuffed animal, he loved being cuddled and when he would sleep on my bed he’d be like half on, half off. He’d be like falling off the bed and he wouldn’t even care, he would just stay there,” he remembered, laughing.
Google went to a family with a boy who has autism.
“He turned out really well,” Negrin said. “He’s up in Timmins right now with his child and I still keep in contact with them so it’s nice.”
Negrin is currently waiting for another service dog to train and is taking an extra year of high school to take the classes required to get into the bachelor of science in psychology co-op program at the University of Waterloo or the University of Guelph. He’s also volunteering at the Wellington Terrace.
Kali Hodgson
Hodgson, 18, also just completed her Grade 12 year at Centre Wellington District High School, earning close to 3,000 hours volunteering at the school.
Hodgson’s volunteer focus was at the food school and one of her big responsibilities was the morning breakfast program, which provides a school-wide free breakfast once a week.
“Not only did she help with the breakfast program but she also mentored other students while she was doing that; she attended meetings for me to advocate on behalf of the breakfast program,” said Nicole DeBeyer, the school chef in charge of the breakfast program.
“We have lots of great students at this school but she really has proved how awesome our student body really can be.”
Hodgson did everything from food preparation to dish cleaning with the breakfast program – even during exams.
“So every day of exams, regardless of whether she had an exam that day or not, she was here bright and early to get that ready for students and to set it up, tear it down afterwards,” DeBeyer said. “It really is speaking to her commitment.”
And for Hodgson it never seemed like work.
“I always wanted to come,” she said. “Even if it was like ‘aw I’m going to have a terrible day, I don’t want to go to class, well Chef D and Chef Jess are going to be there and I’m going to help them with stuff, so it’s going to be a good day.’”
Hodgson has also volunteered catering fundraiser dinners for the food school at the high school and she ran the school café.
“We have a student-run café where we serve food next to the cafeteria so the students and staff can choose where they’re purchasing food from and so we have a student-run servery plus a till that needs to be run and Kali is our primary on that so she will deal with every transaction at lunch hour, has been for years,” said chef Christopher Jess.
“If she couldn’t make it, she’d coordinate. I’d never have to go find somebody; she always networked and found somebody to cover her post if she couldn’t do it.”
Hodgson also has a part-time job at the Desert Rose in Elora and will be attending the University of Waterloo for mechanical engineering in the fall.
