The gift of listening

Tel-Aide receives several thousand calls every year. The proliferation of listening services, and several other factors, makes it increasingly difficult for us to recruit volunteers. Your commitment to become a listener, in other words, is essential if we are to assure a welcoming, respectful, and empathic presence for a growing number of people who are, too often, cut off from all fulfilling human contact.
Do you have some time to offer? Join us!

Our volunteers are the heart of Tel-Aide.
Tel-Aide volunteers come from all walks of life: they work in a variety of fields, and include retirees, students, and self-employed workers. What all these men and women share is a desire to help their fellow humans.


The qualities a listener needs are:

• authenticity
• respect
• empathy

Why Become a Tel-Aide Volunteer?

• The most rare and precious gift we can offer to people who are in difficulty is to listen to them.

• By listening, volunteers help callers defuse a crisis, and begin a process of reflection that will lead them to find solutions to their problem.

• The listener's contribution to the process of problem resolution can be of particular importance in preventing suicide.

• Training in active listening – mastering the art of listening, and developing an open spirit, unconditional acceptance, flexibility, and tolerance – becomes an important source of growth and enrichment for the listener.