Internationally inspired - A story of Volunteerism

Lori Harasem lands in Vancouver just hours before the Invictus Games opening ceremonies. She’s one of the last volunteers to arrive, so she heads directly to Accreditation and Uniform to pick up her volunteer uniform, a yellow and black Karbon jacket, fleece and a couple of t-shirts. She hasn’t volunteered a minute and she’s already impressed.

Outside, downtown Vancouver is already awash in yellow and black from the influx of global volunteers and staff who have come to town for the event.

It’s a big moment for Lori, whose day job is as the Health Promotion coordinator at Lethbridge Polytechnic. She’s stepping onto the international stage as a volunteer. This week, she’ll be the Sport Supervisor, responsible for making sure the behind-the-scenes action at her games is smooth and invisible.

She joins the sea of yellow and black at BC Place Stadium to watch Katy Perry, Nellie Furtado, and Chris Martin, and a speech from Prince Harry.

Founded by Prince Harry in 2014, the Invictus Games are an international sport competition for wounded service personnel. Latin for 'unconquered', the Invictus Games are less about winning medals and more about helping those struggling with the consequences of war, from physical injuries like losing a leg to mental injuries, like PTSD.

Sports include Indoor Rowing, Sitting Volleyball, Swimming, Wheelchair Rugby, and Wheelchair Basketball. These competitions attract teams from all over the world, including Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Denmark & Estonia.

For athletes, it’s the opportunity to find purpose and people to help in their struggle to heal.

For Lori, it’s the chance to see behind the scenes at a multinational competition while being part of the athlete’s healing journeys.

“Being a part of something so meaningful for those who are participating, and who thank me for volunteering constantly, is humbling,” she said. “I'd do this 100 times over if I could stop even one person from losing their life to suicide, why wouldn't I do that? And I get the privilege of meeting so many great people and being a part of the energy of something as exciting as these Games.”

It’s the pinnacle of a career in volunteerism that has sparked a love of swimming, inspired her to run and even taken her to Africa with Olympic medallists. And it took a lifelong commitment to volunteering to get there.

Lori was born and raised in Kelowna and some of her earliest memories are tagging along with her mom, Dianne

“I don't recall exactly when I started volunteering, but my mom always volunteered and so I volunteered often with her,” Lori said.

When Lori joined Girl Guides, her mom returned the favour and joined Lori by volunteering.

With volunteer hours already under her belt by the time she started school, Lori was ready to help. Her love of books and volunteering soon came together as she started helping out with the school library.

From there, she didn’t stop. When the city started painting fish on the drains to educate people about where the water went, Lori signed up. This new focus opened up a whole new volunteer option.

“I became very aware of our environment and trying to preserve it,” Lori said. “ So I always tried to sign up to help with environmental causes, whether it was painting fish or going to a rally.”

But it wasn’t until high school that Lori got her first taste of volunteering for a sports competition. One of her father’s friends was a triathlete. As a runner, Lori was impressed that everyday athletes were adding swimming and cycling to an already gruelling foot race. So when the Apple Triathlon came around, she volunteered.

“I remember just being completely wowed by the triathletes,” Lori said. “I had been a fairly strong runner in high school, but watching people swim, bike and then run was pretty inspiring to me”

And just as she found her inspiration, her sights turned to new pursuits.

After finishing high school, Lori moved to Lethbridge to go to University, which slowed down her volunteerism. Then she got her first job, a serious boyfriend who turned into a husband and then a family. So there wasn’t a lot of time to explore new possibilities for volunteering.

When her children grew up, they started participating in sports, so Lori took a page out of her Mom’s book and joined them by volunteering.

“If I'm going to be in the stands watching my kid do something, why can't I help in other ways?” Lori said.

So she took on 50/50s, officiating and sitting on boards while her kids learned to play.

Then, she took a position at City Hall as the Recreation and Culture Development Manager at the City of Lethbridge. Despite taking up eight hours a day, this new role opened up a whole new world of volunteer opportunities.

“I was responsible for grants that provided funding support to events,” Lori said. ”Through those grants, I became interested in a lot of the events that I was providing funding for. So, when I saw one I thought was interesting, I offered to volunteer.”

With early knowledge of nearly every event going on in Lethbridge, Lori had endless volunteering opportunities open up to her. And she took as many as she could. She volunteered for the Lethbridge Rotary Dragon Boat Festival, the Lost Soul Ultra, the Calgary Folk Fest, and anything else that inspired her or piqued her curiosity.

While the cultural events kept her coming back, it was the races and sport competitions that kept bringing her back for something new and unique.

“I would see all these people doing these sports and realize, yes, there were elite athletes, but a lot of times there were people that were more like me and they'd just put in the time,” Lori said. “I thought it was awesome. seeing people just follow their passion and their heart without letting things stand in their way.”

Event after event rolled by, and so did the volunteer experiences. For some, Lori stuck around and got more involved. She went from volunteering at the Dragon Boat Festival to rowing in a dragon boat and now coaching a visually impaired dragonboat team. Others satisfied her curiosity and she moved on.

After a few years, this volunteerism turned into a lifestyle for Lori, a pastime she enjoyed because it filled her life with new experiences and people, and got her into endless events for free.

“I always used to joke that volunteering got me into event's for free,” Lori said. “So I always tell people if you can't afford a ticket go volunteer.”

After a few years volunteering for just about anything that came up, Lori had an impressive volunteer CV. But her curiosity wasn’t sated. She wanted to go bigger and see how the event world out there, beyond city limits worked.

Then she stumbled on something new.

While voting for a blogger friend to win a competition to go to Africa with Olympians, Lori entered herself into another contest aligned with the vote.. Then, she quickly forgot and moved on with her life.

A couple months later, she was told she won. She would be accompanying Olympians Clara Hughes and Rosie McLennan to Africa with the organization, Right to Play.

“I told one of the organizers I can't believe the luck that I had.,” Lori said “I never win anything. She actually informed me that if I had read small print, I would have seen that it said that they would draw multiple names and then they would decide who the winner was from those and that they had googled us all.”

When they did, they found Lori’s long history of volunteering in sport. Her volunteer work, involvement in sports and work with children made her the perfect candidate, in the organizer’s mind.

They toured through communities, educating children through sport, while a documentary team followed them around.

“It was really, really cool to see a lot of their work,” Lori said. “A lot of it was around empowering women and so that was amazing to be a part of.”

With the first taste of international volunteerism behind her, Lori found herself craving more. So, she applied to volunteer at the 2024 Special Olympics Winter National Games in Calgary and was accepted. Working with a diverse crew, with people from all over Canada itched a scratch Lori didn’t even know she had.

“That really got me,” she said. “I wanted to do bigger and then, right after those games, I saw that Invictus games were coming to Vancouver.”

Driven by the desire to volunteer with bigger events, Lori checked the Invictus Games website and found there was a call for volunteers. She put in her application and then waited to see if she was accepted.

Instead, she got an email asking for more information, which she supplied. Then, she was asked to do an interview, after which she was told she was accepted pending a criminal record check.

Once that was over, they gave Lori her title: Sport Supervisor, which meant she was going to have a lot of responsibility court-side.

“The sport team volunteers do everything from prepping fields of play to making sure that the competitors all have their equipment,” Lori said. “And if any of them run into problems, then they come to me.”

While the opening ceremonies, with their glitz and glam, were exciting for Lori, as was seeing Prince Harry and Megan Markle up close, the real highlight of the event was the competitors.

The most special part of the opening ceremony was the standing ovation for the competitors from Ukraine,” Lori said.

Their ability through sport to overcome a massive invasion into their homeland, as well as their injuries, brought Lori's mind back to her work at the Polytechnic,

“At the Polytechnic I led a project to create a suicide prevention strategy, utilizing Indigenous Ways of Knowing called Life Promotion,” Lori said. “It dawned on me that the language being used about what the Games mean to these competitors is the same language that Life Promotion uses for the work I do every day! It was so cool to see this connection.”

After a lifelong commitment to sport, the Invictus Games have shown Lori the real impact of her volunteer career.

“The stories the competitors share about how sport has helped pull them out of such dark times are incredible,” Lori said. “Myself and several volunteers commented today that we got teary multiple times talking to them and experiencing moments, like competitors from other teams helping others finish a race when a wheelchair breaks or someone feels too tired to go on. One swim race ended with not a dry eye in the house, even us officials were crying. Watching these individuals use sport and push themselves to learn to believe in themselves and find purpose, belonging, meaning, and hope in their lives again, was awe-inspiring.”

“The competitors will tell you that the Games changed their life, former competitors have shared what these Games have done for them, and seeing that firsthand and playing a small role in that has truly been a highlight of my life.”