Emil Sorensen, 90, recently won the 2018 Extraordinary Senior Award. The Departure Bay resident is a volunteer at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo. Photo courtesy VIU.
Emil Sorensen’s volunteer work at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, and in the community, has helped earn the 90-year-old a provincial award for his service.
Sorensen recently won the 2018 Extraordinary Senior Award, a province-wide prized started by Retirement Concepts that honours a person each year who is 65-years or older who goes “above and beyond to help their community.”
Sorensen volunteers with the Heavy Mechanical Trades program at VIU, after spending 28 years as an instructor in the program until his retirement in 1992.
His duties include helping faculty repair and modify equipment and shares his skill-set with students.
“If I can give them a little bit of my knowledge, then maybe they don’t have to go digging for it later,” Sorensen said in a VIU release.
“What I get paid in is thank you’s and you can’t buy that – it’s so precious.”
The university also credits Sorensen for organizing “a dinner group for single seniors to break the social isolation and foster new friendships; volunteers for the Mid-Island Vintage Tractor and Equipment Club; and donates fresh produce grown in his backyard garden to the Salvation Army.”
“After spending some time with him and watching him come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems, they aspire to attain the same level of knowledge he has,” Dean and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Trades and Applied Technology Paul Mottershead said in a statement.
“He demonstrates for students that learning never stops, and that this trade is more than just a job – it’s a career.”
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