International Volunteer Day: Four volunteers, four countries, four life experiences to contribute to Paris 2024

By Julie Trosic
6 min|
Jean Berthiaume (Canada), on the left, already a volunteer at Rio 2016

International Volunteer Day is celebrated every year on 5 December. To mark the occasion, Olympics.com spoke to four volunteers from various countries who shared how they felt about being selected to help with the organisation of the Paris 2024 Games in France.

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To celebrate International Volunteer Day, Olympics.com interviewed four volunteers who were recently selected to assist with the organisation of the Olympic Games Paris 2024.

Even though they hail from different parts of the world - Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United States - they all have a personal story related to the Olympic Games and are eager to contribute to organising the biggest sporting event on earth.

Find out why they decided to apply to become volunteers, how they reacted when they discovered they were selected, the special bonds they have with the Olympics, and what their favourite Olympic sport is.

Jean Berthiaume (Canada) who previously volunteered at Rio 2016: “It is such an enriching experience”

After participating at Vancouver 2010 as a torchbearer, then volunteering at the Pan-American Games Toronto 2015 and Rio 2016, Jean Berthiaume is ready for a new experience at Paris 2024.

The 58-year-old French-speaking Canadian is semi-retired having worked in the field of water treatment in Quebec. His lifelong “passion for sport” motivated him to apply to become a volunteer at the Olympics.

Berthiaume especially likes “to motivate people to move more, because it's so important for both mental and physical health.”

His favourite Olympic memory is from the athletics competition at Atlanta 1996, when Bruny Surin and his Canadian compatriots won the gold medal in the men’s 4x100m relay event, beating heavy favourites the USA. “I watched it live [on television] and it made me jump out of happiness,” he recalls with emotion.

Berthiaume is also a travel enthusiast; along with his wife, he has visited almost every continent. This is one of the reasons he decided to apply to become a volunteer at Paris 2024, in addition to wanting to experience the excitement of the Olympic Games in a French-speaking country - an opportunity that doesn’t come around too often.

“I think it is so enriching to [combine] sport, travel, relationships and shared experiences with millions of people from all around the world who are there to attend the Olympics. As a sports fan at heart, the Games offer all of that together.”

After his experience volunteering during the Rio 2016 golf events, Berthiaume will have the pleasure of joining the Protocol team on the greens of Guyancourt, near Paris, next summer.

Régine van Heest at the national training centre of Papendal Arnhem, home of the Dutch Olympic 'Team NL', in the Netherlands (2023).

Régine van Heest (the Netherlands): "It’s a dream come true!"

When she was still a child, Régine (Rijzewijk) van Heest used to watch the Olympics on TV and saved clippings about the Games from newspapers. She was first inspired by the American swimmer Mark Spitz who won seven gold medals at Munich 1972.

Now 55, Van Heest has many years of experience in sports event management, working at football’s UEFA Euro 2000 and the Giro d’Italia 2016 road cycling tour, among other events. Those experiences only fuelled her passion to volunteer at the Olympics. “To work on the biggest event in the world, as an event organiser, it's a dream!”

Van Heest’s desire to volunteer at Paris 2024 stems from wanting to experience the Games from the inside. Ever since she applied to be a volunteer, her mobile phone screensaver has reminded her every day of her childhood dream: “Régine, you will be there!” it says in French below the logo of the next Olympics.

Then one evening, the email she had been hoping for arrived.

“I did not sleep all night, I was overwhelmed that I could go [to Paris],” she remembered.

She now knows her roles at next summer’s Games: firstly, as a member of the Protocol team working at Stade de France during the Olympic Games, then as a volunteer in the main press centre during the Paralympic Games. It’s the perfect combination for an avid supporter of the Dutch wheelchair basketball national team like her.

Danny Silva, Portuguese athlete in cross-country skiing at the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games

Former Olympian Danny Silva still has “the desire to return to the Games”

Among the volunteers working next summer at Paris 2024, one will bring with them considerable Olympic experience. Portugal’s Danny Silva is a two-time Olympian, who competed in cross-country skiing at Turin 2006 and Vancouver 2010. He was also his country’s flagbearer and sole athlete at those Games.

“I'm happy to say that after me Portugal was represented at every Winter Olympic Games,” explains the former skier who spent a lot of time training in high altitude in Font-Romeu in the French Pyrenees. “It's a small legacy.”

Now 50 years old, Silva views Paris 2024 as an opportunity to reconnect with the world of the Olympics, which has been so important to him. “It's a part of my life,” he says.

His new Olympic goal is to assist with the success of Paris 2024 by working as a volunteer in the media centre, while his wife will also help out by volunteering in another team.

Silva currently works in an international school in Germany where he teaches sport. While he enjoyed great success as a cross-country skier, he now also participates in triathlon, a sport that has become “another passion”.

When it comes to Paris 2024, he hopes at least one French athlete wins a gold medal in triathlon: Vincent Luis or Cassandre Beaugrand.

“Those are the type of moments we can only experience at the Olympic Games and I hope that Paris will have some of them. I'm sure it will be the case because Paris is always special...”

Ernest Peterson (United States), already a volunteer at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games

Ernest Peterson (USA): “A chance of a lifetime” that can leave you wanting more

Having retired from his role in a property appraiser's office in Florida, Ernest Pederson is a volunteer at heart, and particularly in the area of sport.

Passionate about basketball, he acts as the time master in charge of the game clock for the Stetson University basketball team in the city of DeLand.

After volunteering at Salt Lake City 2002, he volunteered at every winter edition of the Games until Sochi 2014, where he particularly enjoyed working with the parents of Olympians at the downhill skiing venue. He then switched to the Summer Games when he volunteered at Rio 2016, following it up with a role as a volunteer at Tokyo 2020.

For Ernie, "to volunteer in one of the most beautiful cities in the world at one of the greatest sporting events was a chance of a lifetime." Next summer in Paris, he will join the Protocol team based near the Eiffel Tower Stadium and the Champ de Mars Arena.

Currently in his seventies, he continues to be in contact with other past volunteers from all over the world whom he met during previous Olympics. Today he wants to tell his future colleagues and friends at Paris 2024 that "this will be one of the greatest experiences of their lives and [they] will want to volunteer for the next Games.”