National Volunteer Week 2020: 18 - 24 May Our Volunteers 2 | SAcommunity

Submitted by SAcommunity on Wed, 05/20/2020 - 23:35

Pictured below (L - R): Rex Porter, Alexander Bull, Edward Winsor, Farhana Razeem, Samantha Agius, Stathis Avramis Not pictured: Our offsite volunteer Malcolm and Lynn.

Connecting Up Volunteers Friday Group

Connecting Up would like to again thank our Volunteers for their work and also for taking up the remote working / Working From Home challenge. Our volunteers were able to quickly adapt to new software tools such as Zoom and Slack for communication and utilise the tools we had in the office including 3CX and Microsoft Teams more thoroughly to continue maintaining the SAcommunity service. Our volunteers even held our first interview via Zoom for a new story on how community services were moving online and conecting with their members.

Our last photo before we moved to remote working.

Rex Porter and Stathis Avramis
Many in our Friday group are long-term, regular volunteers, Rex Porter (1 year, 2 months) and Stathis Avramis (2 years 2 months) who provides 15 hours a week to the database as well as problem solving across the volunteer program. Both hail from a joint Volunteer Partnerships program with the City of Prospect where both these council volunteers are shared with the SAcommunity program to maintain details for services in the Prospect area for the council and local community and provide their collective knowledge and understanding of government services to the directory.

Samantha Agius and Malcolm
Likewise, Samantha Agius has joined us from City of Tea Tree Gully two and a half years ago and after quickly updating all the listings in this council, she has continued to assist in maintaining services across SA for all councils both onsite and offsite providing several hours each week. In combination with our offsite volunteer Malcolm, our longest serving volunteer at six and a half years, providing 15 hours each week towards the database. Samantha and Malcolm both strive (and achieve) perfection in their listings, diligently following the style guide and creating an information architecture for each listing that provides accurate information from careful searching and collating of relevant data to help people find the services they need.

Edward Windsor and Alexander Bull
Edward Windsor and Alexander Bull have both been with us for nearly 8 months and are volunteering at Connecting Up whilst they continue to seek employment and undertake job seeker requirements. Edward is volunteering to maintain his admin and customer service skills whilst he looks for work in IT or related fields such as computer assembly and repair.

Alexander Bull has a Bachelor of Social Sciences and a Certificate II in Business Administration. He has previously worked in the printing industry and for SANTOS. At Connecting Up he has been working on a large project to update a series of related entries in the directory and check their accuracy.

Alexander would like to be employed in a job where he is able to use his skills, aptitudes and knowledge, especially those he acquired from his degree. Ideally, he would like to work in the fields of policy, planning or research in human services. One thing he would like to do is to use his degree in creating campaign settings using the rules for tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder.

Farhana Razeen's Story >>here

Lynn (not pictured)
Lynn has volunteered on and off at Connecting Up between her studies for 3 years. Lynn first started after completing her Business Administration studies at TAFE SA to gain some work experience, build confidence and become more familiar with the Australian work culture. Lynn will now be finishing her Book keeping and Accounting course is looking forward to utilising the skills she has learnt at Connecting Up for future employment in these areas.

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National Volunteer Week 2020: 18 - 24 May Our Volunteers 2

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