My Volunteer Experience - David Webb | SAcommunity

Submitted by Volunteer David Webb on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 22:54

Photo: David Webb SAcommunity Team Member at the Connecting Up office

Thank you David!

David joined our SAcommunity Community Service Team after retiring from full-time work and completes ~4 hours onsite with SAcommunity at the Connecting Up Office, Infoxchange for one day a week around his work and other volunteering commitments.

Total Hours 646 hours This Year 118 hours Joined 11 September 2019 Last Check-in 23 October 2024

SAcommunity wanted to highlight our affection for 'the old guard' our experienced and established SAcommunity veterans. People who make up our core team, return regularly each week to volunteer and keep the service running. They assist in decision-making, idea development and implementation, check and create processes, and critically, help our new volunteers and interns find their feet. We felt we were more than overdue to introduce, acknowledge and thank some of our team members.

Our Volunteer David Webb - Personal Biography
David has volunteered with Connecting Up Inc. since 11 September 2019 when he retired from full-time work. A social work graduate, he has more than 30 years of experience in the Child and Family Welfare sector and working with people living with disability, more recently he returned to casual work to support NDIS recipients.

David volunteers across other community-focused organisations to continue to give back and stay involved, as well as enjoying the company of others that can be found in a work environment. He enjoys contributing his skills to SAcommunity to assist people access resources in their community and live more engaged lives.

Image: Volunteer David Webb contacting and updating community service listings across South Australia

Customer Service and Information Management Team Project
David responds to the many SAcommunity emails received and contacts community services across South Australia by phone to continue the important and continual work of updating the directory. In addition, he undertakes community information projects in response to community needs for assistive services.

Community Information Management Projects
David has undertaken several projects over his time. One project in October 2023 in response to an increase in demand noticed in the Data Analytics on SAcommunity for public showers. In response he worked to find, list and tag additional community services in South Australia providing public showers for people who are experiencing homelessness.

In November 2023 he collated the annual Christmas Meals list of charities providing food on Christmas Day for people who are homeless, isolated, and on low income. The list is available online and for distribution across not-for-profit services in South Australia to provide referrals for people in need, isolated or lonely, or homeless at this time of year.

Over 2024 he has collected information on Farmers Markets with Volunteer Rex Porter, following up previous work on organisations providing food assistance. The cost of food and local produce at Farmers Markets are generally cheaper than those being sold through supermarkets and allows people to find alternative ways to buy food and supplies they need.

Image: Volunteer David Webb teaching telephone techniques to new volunteers and interns, during a demonstration with intern Nicole Cheng 29 May 2023

Customer Service and Information Management Team Lead - Telephone Techniques Training
Is there a community service that can resist David's dulcet tones? We think probably not! His professional telephone manner and conversations across community organisations are the ones to stop the room as he happily untangles our complex older queries and un-loved updates. We rely on David's expertise in telephone techniques to demonstrate successful phone calls for some of our newer volunteers and interns, particularly for those who have not been in the workforce before. With his hints being to 'Keep calm, focussed and connected.'

David uses his extensive social work experience to easily connect with a vast range of assistive services to find out who is running what, who's funded by who, and what their new name is now - sometimes even when the service can no longer remember what they themselves are called - departments we're looking at you!

SAcommunity Volunteer Awards 2022
A winner of our in-house International Volunteer Day Award ceremony held on December 5th 2022, he received the Indiana Jones Award for 2022, due to his witty sense of humour and extensive work in discovering more about and unravelling our complicated 'ancient' records. David has also won numerous accolades by introducing our team to the delights of Portuguese custard tarts for morning tea - thanks David!

IXcel Employee Recognition Program - David Webb was one of four winners of the Inspirational Leader Award across Infoxchange for July to September 2023

Infoxchange Awards
David was also a winner of the Inspirational Leader Award in 2023, as part of the IXcel Employee Recognition Program, and was one of four winners across the organisation for July to September 2023 announced at the quarterly Infoxchange Town Hall meeting.

Congratulations David! You have been nominated and selected as one of the winners for the Inspirational Leader Award in the period July to September 2023.

Here’s what your peer had to say:

'David began volunteering on the 11 September 2019, completing 101.25 hours this year and 488.00 hours in total. David leads the Customer Service Team, teaching volunteers Telephone Techniques so that they can update their records and datasets as well as learn the skills they will need for their future workplaces. In this way he encourages and creates opportunities for other volunteers to thrive.'

Your contributions, like others, help us to achieve our vision, mission and objectives as an organisation to achieve social justice outcomes. Kate Hickman - Chief People Officer

We also included David's response:

'Thankyou for this award. And thanks to Catherine for nominating me, and to Pankaj for supporting her nomination. Such a surprise. I really come to work here to give myself a little challenge and to enjoy the company of some lovely people. It's a privilege to be here. I certainly don't set out to be an inspiration to others, so if others are inspired by me, I'm delighted.' - David Webb

Image: Volunteer David Webb assisting Intern Putri Kamaluudin in practicing Telephone Techniques 1 March 2020

Image: David Webb Leading a Telephone Techniques Session. Right to Left: Intern Grace Hong Hong, Volunteers Pujan Maharjan, Rex Porter (Information Management Team), David Webb (Customer Service Team), Thea Shiye Jin, Alice Jinye Zeng and Michael Pak Hei Chan

Image: Volunteer David Webb assisting Volunteers Thea Shiye Jin and Alice Jinye Zeng in practicing Telephone Techniques 26 July 2023

Image: Volunteer David Webb leading Telephone Techniques Training 11 September 2024

Image: Volunteer David Webb teaching Interns Lily and Eily Telephone Techniques in a practice session 11 September 2024

Volunteers David Webb, Lynn Huang, Rex Porter and Stathis Avramis

Opportunities for Digital Skills development
One of the SAcommunity Volunteer benefits is access to the Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform for online training and development with a selection of relevant live webinars and recorded webinars, workshops and webcons for life-long learning from a series of subject matter experts.

Connecting Up Digital Learning webinars David has accessed include: