In 2005, insurance advisors Terry Zavitz and Zoltan Barzso scaled the 5,896-metre Mount Kilimanjaro. In reaching the top, they achieved their personal goals. But they also achieved a goal central to any volunteer effort: helping someone else “make it.”

It is the same goal that motivates Cheryl Bauer Hyde, a certified financial planner with Tyler & Associates Financial Services Ltd. in Regina. She refers to a co-operative sense of hope, of building something as a group, of growing both personally and professionally, when she talks about why she volunteers.

But however you say it, it amounts to the same feeling. Volunteers find joy in knowing they have changed their own lives by making a difference in someone else’s life.

Although Zavitz, president of Terry Zavitz Insurance Inc. in London, Ont., and Barzso, president of Mississauga, Ont.-based Accurate Design Benefits, climbed together, each had a different cause. Zavitz was raising money for the Make a Wish Foundation (www.wish.org), which helps dying children achieve their wishes; Barzso’s climb was to raise money for research aimed at finding a cure for breast cancer.

Barzso decided to dedicate his climb to breast cancer research after one of his closest friends developed breast cancer. He also knows two other women who were diagnosed with breast cancer, and a man who has had a double mastectomy. (The incidence of breast cancer in men is low — 1% of the total — but because men aren’t on the lookout for it, the cancer usually isn’t diagnosed until it has become quite advanced.)

Barzso was deeply affected by watching his friend deal with the side effects of chemotherapy, and he came up with a tangible way to help — by raising money to help find a cure for breast cancer.

“You create your own answer to ‘What can I do?’”he says.

Barzso recognizes that the $20,000 that he raised — $10,000 of it a personal donation — will be used up quickly by breast cancer researchers. “It’s just a chip. But tiny strokes fell mighty oaks,” he says.

Zavitz’s Kilimanjaro climb achieved both a personal goal — to make the climb before she turned 50 — and a fundraising goal. She raised $6,500 for the southwestern Ontario chapter of the Make a Wish Foundation. The money will pay for a terminally ill boy and his family to visit Disneyland.

The connection to this particular charity is through Cheryl Parkhill, Zavitz’s “right-hand office person,” who is a volunteer with the Make a Wish Foundation.

While Barzso’s and Zavitz’s climb was an effort by individuals, several Canadians have climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as part of a collective effort to raise money for breast cancer research. The CIBC Wood Gundy Climb for the Cure was started in 2004 by CIBC Wood Gundy investment advisor Mike Ramsden in support of his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer. CIBC also sponsors the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure, which has raised more than $21 million for research since it began in 1992.

Mark Hierlihy, director of development for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, points out that 75% of CIBC employees are women, so involvement in breast cancer speaks directly to the company’s demographic.

Breast cancer now strikes one in nine women — more than the one in 20 women who were diagnosed with the disease in the 1970s. But, says Hierlihy, “Volunteer participation in events such as the run, which will be held on Oct. 1 this year, brings a sense of hope.”

Bauer Hyde maintains that co-operative sense of hope accounts for the high rate of volunteerism in Saskatchewan. Perhaps this has been necessitated by rural life in Saskatchewan, she says, as there haven’t been large institutions or corporation sponsors to get things done: “People ask: ‘If we don’t do it, how is it going to get done?’

“I’m following in the footsteps of my grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles,” she adds.

In 2002, Bauer Hyde received a Saskatchewan Volunteer Award for her 20-plus years of volunteering in the arts and culture community. She has a long list of volunteer credits, including as board member of the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils, chairwoman of the former Canadian Association of Financial Planners and board member of the Financial Planners Standards Council.

@page_break@Zavitz, too, has a long history of volunteerism, which was recognized in 2004, when she was given the Woman of Distinction Award for Business and Trade in her hometown of London.

The many volunteer positions Zavitz has held include chairwoman of the board the London Health Sciences Centre, board member for the hospital foundation and board member for Merrymount Children’s Home. Recently, she began volunteering with Advocis, both in her local chapter and on the policy advisory committee nationally.

But, she says, you should never volunteer for a cause thinking it is going to grow your business.

She admits she likes the “warm feeling of recognition” that sometimes comes from meeting business associates through volunteer work. However, she makes it a rule to back out of any volunteer advisory situation in which there is the potential for conflict of interest.

For Bauer Hyde, her professional volunteerism carries the same motivation as her community volunteer work. “We were a group of advisors who wanted to advance our profession. No one was going to do it but us.”

There’s no financial gain in it, she adds: “It’s all about the cause.”

Bauer Hyde says that volunteering leads to both personal and professional growth. For example, she has travelled to almost every province, meeting people from coast to coast. She has “learned negotiation skills through working with a variety of people.” She has been on audit committees and handled corporate governance issues. Those are the skills that can be applied to her financial planning practice.

These are opportunities to learn and grow that you wouldn’t normally have in your day-to-day job, says Bauer Hyde. IE