Nathalie Maione, Rena Bowen Volunteer of the Year
Directrice Générale, Action Logement and President/Co-Founder, Helping with Furniture
Early Childhood Education, 1983
Nathalie Maione is a mother of six children, grandma to three more, works full-time and over the past 15 years has provided new beginnings to thousands of families across Ottawa through her volunteer organization Helping with Furniture.
The charity provides furniture and household goods to refugees, recent immigrants and people relocating from shelters, leaving abusive situations, struggling with mental illness or at risk of homelessness.
A graduate of Algonquin College’s Early Childhood Education program in 1983, Maione’s dedication and enthusiasm over close to four decades has made a huge impact on people in the Ottawa area.
Her tireless efforts have led to her receiving the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal and the United Way of Eastern Ontario’s Community Builder Award.
You can now add the Rena Bowen Volunteer of the Year recognition presented annually to an Algonquin College graduate through the College’s Alumni of Distinction Awards.
Maione was very excited and honoured when she learned of the recognition.
“I love what Algonquin College does. I feel like it’s a community, a very strong community where people are supported even after their graduation. It’s a great honour because of that. Algonquin College fits very well in Helping with Furniture. We have embodied the same philosophy of community and support.”
Helping with Furniture “or something like it”, said Maione, was the dream of community stalwarts Bob and Elizabeth Rapley.
They had been working with refugees for over a decade and were always looking for people to move furnishings around.
The donations were usually big and cumbersome and the Rapleys were often in search of someone with a big vehicle.
Maione had a 15-passenger van to shuttle her large family and the children she cared for in her home daycare.
“I said to Bob, ‘I have a big van, no problem, and started taking out the seats and started moving furniture,” she recalled.
The charitable organization got its start from there.
“Bob and Elizabeth had thought of the idea, and I took off with it, having them as mentors along the way. They had not dreamed it could ever be so big. But in my head, I always saw it bigger. We still have a way to go.”
Her first delivery was for a Venezuelan family who had left their whole life behind in their home country.
She was hooked from the start.
“All they had was two little suitcases. I kept thinking, ‘how would I do? What would I take? In two little suitcases would be my whole life if I had to do that. I just couldn’t fathom it. Do you bring pictures? Do you bring clothes? What do you bring from your life? I kept thinking about that choice they had to make and what they had to leave behind.”
Maione is quick to point out the work is not the “job of one”, stressing she couldn’t do what she does without an army of volunteers.
“Helping with Furniture is a really amazing thing. And it’s just not me. It has a spirit and a life that is unbeatable. I am blessed to be able to manage and gather the most amazing people and some of them have started their own initiatives. They’re such beautiful people. I’m a very lucky person.”
Many of those lending a hand are former students and toddlers who came through her daycare for over 25 years.
She often took in kids free of charge whose parents were struggling. A lot of time they were refugees who were taking English classes and couldn’t afford to have daycare. It was this window on their world where she firsthand saw the real need for furniture “that we all took for granted”.
Maione always thought it would be nice to have something to point to that would take from people that have a lot, and don’t need it anymore, and bring it to people who don’t have anything.
“Kind of like a Robinhood type of thing,” she quipped.
“It wasn’t even me making the effort for it to grow. It just kind of grew and we had to adapt. It’s like it has a life of its own. It grows because of need.”
Her full-time work as Executive Director with Action-Logement (Action Housing) sees her keeping people housed and finding housing for them. So, her volunteer sideline brings her in touch with clients at both ends of their journey.
It is only because we live in an unbelievably generous community, Maione says, that Helping with Furniture can meet the growing need.
“We go from one world crisis to another. And we have to adapt. But at the same time, we have to handle all of the crises that we have here, which is poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental health issues,” she said. “All of those are very present on a daily basis in our lives.”
What drives her to continue is “no one should be lacking for anything”.
“People having to make that choice between food and rent. That should not exist. Not at all in our world. We have enough stuff and so there is that belief and that will always keep me going because I really, truly believe that should not exist.”