Sun Life Financial advisors across Canada have been named finalists in the company’s 2009 Volunteer of the Year employee competition.

The company announced on Monday that Rauni Naud, an advisor with the Kootenay Financial Centre in British Columbia, is the 2009 Volunteer of the Year. Naud completed 750 hours of volunteer work in 2009, for such organizations as the United Way in Castlegar and Nelson B.C., the Dry Grad program at Stanley Humphries Secondary School in Castlegar and the Castlegar Cancer Society community run.

To honour Naud’s dedication to volunteering, Sun Life Financial will donate $10,000 to the United Way of Castelgar, B.C., as selected by Naud.

“Sun Life is extremely proud of our employees and advisors, from across Canada, who are dedicated to making the communities where they live and work brighter every day through many hours of volunteer work,” said Kevin Dougherty, president of Sun Life Financial Canada. “Our communities are as strong as the people who live in them, and the volunteers we’re recognizing are truly an example of dedicated citizens.”

Other finalists in the program included Joseph Sask, an advisor based in the Grande Prairie Financial Centre in Alberta, who is actively involved in the Wolverines Wheelchair Sports Association in Grande Prairie, Alberta; Audrey Chiang, an advisor with the Scarborough Financial Centre, who has volunteered for the Mississauga Board of Chinese Professionals and Businesses; and John Maisey of the Moncton Financial Centre, who has been actively involved with the Boys & Girls Club of Moncton.

Sun Life will donate $3,000 to charities as decided by each of these finalists.

The company’s volunteer program provides a donation to the charities where an employee or advisor volunteers a minimum of 50 hours for the year. In 2009, employees and advisors at Sun Life Financial volunteered more than 43,000 hours of their time to organizations and charities across Canada, generating $170,000 in donations.

IE