Gift of Time

Gift of Time

Volunteering

Mae Junke is a passionate volunteer who received the 2026 Mayor’s Volunteer Service Award through Volunteer Manitoba. She is a proud Métis woman from Treaty 1 territory, driven by a strong desire to make a meaningful impact on her community. Mae has been a mentor and tutor with CanU, a Winnipeg-based charitable organization offering mentorship and educational enrichment programs for youth, for three years and is also a member of the Indigenous Circle of Empowerment leadership group on the University of Manitoba campus. We sat down with Mae to talk about her volunteer journey.

WF: How did you begin your journey as a volunteer?

MJ: Back in middle school, I volunteered for Saint Amant, working in the main facility and also in the daycare there. I really enjoyed it. Once I got into high school, I volunteered in a veterinary clinic. I thought I wanted to be a vet for a while – that experience taught me I didn’t! When I went to university, I heard about CanU and have been volunteering with them since.

WF: What does your volunteer life look like today?

MJ: I’ve been mostly a mentor volunteer for the last three years. One activity is bus mentoring, when we get a school bus to pick up the kids at the schools and take attendance and make sure they’re behaving. I’ve done online tutoring as well, teaching math and some other subjects, which was a fun experience.

Volunteering at CanU is the thing I look forward to most each week. I love it so much, it just gives me joy!

WF: Has volunteering given you something that you weren’t expecting?

MJ: With CanU, I’ve learned so much about community, and it solidified the fact that I want to work with kids in some way. Like 100%, that’s what my future looks like. I’m currently heading towards a goal of being an educator, and I came to that realization in CanU, it solidified that fact for me.

WF: Special volunteer moments?

MJ: CanU has given me the opportunity to do speeches through the Stories of Strength event. I got to talk about my Indigenous ancestry, which is something that I wasn’t proud of at the time. They were super welcoming, super supportive, and it was a big moment for me because I’m not great at public speaking. I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but I’m still not great, so this pushed me towards being a better speaker and a better listener, too, honestly. Through that public speaking experience, I was also invited to help with something called Stand and Deliver. It is this program where we help a bunch of CanU kids work on their public speaking skills, and we’d pick some of the kids from that program to speak at the CanU Gala, which I got to attend as well. It was a lovely experience seeing the kids grow.

WF: What about for other volunteers? What would you what would you tell them?

MJ: Keep doing it. Explore different volunteer opportunities too. Don’t just stick to the same thing. Try different things out. See what works for you and just keep it up. It’s awesome.