2nd Quarter Review
Food relief & homelessness was our main focus for the quarter with our amazing community jumping to action once more! Ongoing collections of food, old mobile phones & prescription glasses toiletries etc saw many volunteer sessions sorting & packing & array of much needed aid.
Our homeless initiative saw 1 very full van & 3 carloads going to the Avalon Centre. The team at Roche came for a mega session & packed 300 backpacks & duffle bags & 129 toiletry packs for the homeless. This equates to around 12,000 items! And around 190 more toiletry bags are packed ready to go to another organization in need. Thank you to the VCE vocational students at Beaumaris Secondary who packed tubs full of toiletry packs & the lovely Kristine Barilea Amarillo who organized a birthday get together with friends to make a few hundred toiletry packs. Add packs we previously made & that’s a whopping around 620 toiletry all up for the homeless so far!!
In May we were humbled to be Glen Eira Councils joint runner Community Group of the Year. Very unexpected & appreciated. Also in May, the Victoria Golf Club announced us as one of 3 charities they are supporting through 2023.
Our growing community has been busy sorting, making up packs for homeless, domestic violence & emergency aid and we are loving being in our HQ at Moorleigh Community Village which allows us to hold more regular sessions. Our community supporters have also been busy making beanies, scarves & gloves as well as fiddle rugs & sleeves for our upcoming dementia support initiative. Our Duke of Edinburgh students are also busy helping behind the scenes.
During this quarter we called for hairdressers to help Avalon who have monthly grooming sessions for the homeless. Thank you to those who came forward. More help is needed.
Our food drive through local schools at the request of Bayside Council kicked off with Beaumaris Primary & Sandringham Primary holding much needed food drives. There are more schools to come in the next few months. Food has been delivered to BayCISS & Grace Heart Community Church ongoing & also included the last of our food relief grant from Bayside Council as well as food that was raised by Zoe Daniel MP who requested food donation from attendees at her inciteful Cost of Living forum.
Domestic violence goods were given to Emerge with locally donated goods including new bras from The Good Vibe society and also thanks to a grant from the City of Kingston.
Local supporters supplying donated goods include the lovelies at Beta Sigma Phi & the team at All Souls Opportunity Shop in Sandringham who also gave us a generous monetary donation that is being used for our dementia initiative.
Other goods have been gratefully received from Sox4Support, Moongala Women’s Community House, CWA’s Bayside & Mentone, Bay Quilters, Mawarra YWCA Golf Club, KOGO & Lifestyle Chelsea Heights retirement village.
Alli Harding from Southern FM had our founder Deb Brook on her show & we also sent aid relief to Ukranian‘s relocating locally as well as a family of 5 refugees from Afghanistan who are relocating locally through the governments CRISP program.
We were also lucky to receive a federal grant through Zoe Daniels.
We now have 7 donations stations with new donation points at Community Bank Elwood as well as the Hampton Community Centre.
Our 3rd annual Volunteer Morning Tea was held during National Volunteer Week thanks to a grant from Bayside City Council. This year the tea was held at the historical Black Rock House with the team at Friends of Black Rock House hands on & a huge support. Laurie Evans OEM represented the council & Brad Rowswell MP & Zoe Daniel were also in attendance. Our raffle was again a huge hit & we thank Ella Bache Hampton, Sarah Fleiss Fitness, Acumen Chinese Medicine & Brad Rowswell for their generous donations to the raffle & goodie bags that everyone took home. We also thank the talented Jenny Gee & Yuri Peress from PY-PHOTO for once more donating their time & services.
Early June we were honored to be invited to attend a round table discussion on mental health support with Senator Jane Hume with Peter Dutton in attendance.
Recently our volunteer data base Timecounts moved to a new platform so please log in to: https://timecounts.app & change your password if you haven’t already done so.
And last but definitely not least, we have welcomed 3 new team members. Stephanie Hunt is our new VP, Tracy VI is helping on the IT side & Sandra Piva is Board support.
Request for aid is getting higher so please help share our posts & encourage new members. A MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who helps us help others in need. Together we are making a difference the right way.