Teacher Tyler Chambers inspires his students to embrace volunteering

“A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.” That includes volunteering.

For Tyler Chambers, a Crestwood Secondary School teacher, his impact on his students takes place both inside and outside of the classroom.

Tyler has been teaching for the past 20 years. When he is not in the classroom, he can be found on the fields or courts volunteering his time after school and on weekends to coach his football, basketball and lacrosse teams.

There, he guides players through the challenges of victory or sometimes defeat.

“What better way to volunteer my time doing something I love: sports and working with youths?” he says.

“To teach is a huge responsibility, but it has allowed me the rewarding opportunity to use my skills to coach and mentor young people far beyond what they can learn in the classroom.”

Tyler has been involved with Volunteer Peterborough since its inception, after meeting founder Lois Tuffin through Kawartha Foodshare’s Porch Pirate food drives.

“I reached out to offer the help of Crestwood students,” he recalls. “This was a great way for students to earn their community service hours while helping the local food bank.”

Crestwood students quickly took on the Porch Pirate program where local residents leave bags of food on their porches at determined times throughout the year. The so-called Pirates pick up and then deliver the goods to Kawartha Food Share.

On average, the annual spring event brings in 25,000 pounds of food. At its peak, the program relied on 188 volunteers who gathered 54,000 pounds.

Crestwood now looks after 60 percent of the routes and has been instrumental in the success of this worthy service. In part, they promote the event by distributing flyers to several neighbourhoods the week before. This reminds residents to stock up on key items for the event.

“Porch Pirates has been a most rewarding program,” says Tyler. “Anytime we can put food on the table for those in need I’ll jump right in!”

Tyler is now an active board member for Volunteer Peterborough. He really enjoys learning how volunteer organizations work while contributing as much as he can.

“I have the lens to link kids with organizations in our community acting as the high school liaison with Volunteer Peterborough. It’s very exciting,” he states.

These days, he leads the team planning the second annual Meet Your Match Volunteer Fair. After a sell-out event in 2024, he has set the bar high to double the number of organizations participating this year.

Volunteering has always been a way of life for Tyler. His parents and grandparents were very involved with Meals on Wheels and church events

As a young person, Tyler enjoyed fundraising for hockey tournaments and student council.

Tyler has many goals for the future to make our community a better caring environment, especially where youths are concerned.

He is currently working on a school breakfast program somewhat like The Food Cupboard in Keene. Further, he is facilitating a process to get school boards’ support for Volunteer Peterborough.

In addition, Tyler has a lot of fun coaching his young son’s hockey team.

When asked how people can volunteer, Tyler invites them to visit the Volunteer Peterborough website; once there, pick out a few organizations that appeal to you,  take a friend and try them out.

See what fits by using filters to more quickly find your match, he advises.

“You never know until you try,” he says. “You can meet new friends and enjoy learning different things.”

“The world runs on goodwill and the more people are willing to share goodwill, the better community will be.”