National Volunteer Week 17-23 May 2021: Our Volunteers 1
Photo: (L-R Top Row) Volunteers Lynn Huang, Cheryl, David Webb, (Bottom Row) Rex Porter, Samantha Agius and Stathis Avramis. Not pictured Flavia and Malcolm.
Introducing 'some' of our fantastic Wednesday Volunteer Team
Connecting Up would like to introduce and thank our wonderful volunteers who work to provide information and services to communities, organisations and councils across the state.
Lynn Huang
Lynn first started at Connecting Up on 24 October 2016 after completing her Business Administration certificate III at TAFE SA. Lynn joined the team to gain some local work experience, build her confidence and familiarise herself with Adelaide's work culture to build on her extensive administration experience as a PA in the corporate sector overseas. Lynn has volunteered with SAcommunity between pursuing futher studies at TAFE including Bookkeeping and Accounting over the last few years to broaden her employment prospects.
"I really enjoy meeting other volunteers and found the advice provided in my mentor session with Poorni Illangasekara from the customer experience team was really beneficial.
I look forward to utilising my administration background and the telephone skills I have acquired here to ideally work in the aged care industry in the future.
I plan to keep volunteering at Connecting Up because I feel that providing information updates that act to connect people in the community is valuable."
Cheryl
Cheryl is currently our second longest serving volunteer after Malcolm having started in August 2014. She has a Bachelor of Arts majoring in psychology and brings to the team many years of customer service experience in the government sector. Cheryl works reliably and diligently making phone calls, particularly with challenging calls resulting from undeliverable emails, tracking down contacts across the state for many of SAcommunity’s listings and updating entries. Who can forget the Millicent Sand Buggy Club as an example of persistance in making certain the information we have is correct.
Cheryl has been a key part of SAcommunity for many years, teaching our current coordinator to utilise the database and the update processes as part of her induction. Cheryl is always very welcoming to new volunteers and happy to assist them with training in telephone techniques, one of Cheryl's many skills, she brings reassurance and confidence to many volunteers first embarking on a phone call, a task all are slightly fearful of.
Cheryl always brings us news of the arts sector, recently released books, films and live music bands she has read, watched and seen along with local news events to keep us informed. She also brings very welcome coffee and makes the obligatory caffeine raid in the mornings to return the spoils to a greatful team (and coordinator) Cheryl is retiring this month, and will be sorely missed by her fellow teammates - and not just for the coffee. We wish her all the best going forward.
David Webb
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. David enjoys contributing his skills to SAcommunity to assist people access resources in their community and live more engaged lives. He also volunteers across other community-focused organisations to continue to give back and stay involved.
Is there a community service that can resist David's dulcet tones? We think probably not! David's professional telephone manner and conversations across community organisations are ones to stop the room as he happily untangles our older queries and unloved updates. He uses his extensive social work experience to easily connect with a vast range of assistive services to find out who is now running what, who's funded by who and what their name is now - sometimes even when the service can no longer remember what they themselves are now called. David also introduced us to Portuguese custard tarts. Thank you David!
Rex Porter
Rex been volunteering at SA Community for 2 years since 22 March 2019. He has a background working in the Australian Government sector and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and holds a degree in Mathematical Sciences.
He has found this knowledge and experience has been directly relevant to the work he does on the SA Community database, and is also pleased the time he has spent volunteering has been of tangible benefit to those in the community who are looking for information on community organisations.
Rex particularly enjoys being a part of a diverse volunteer team, who come from a wide range of cultural and educational backgrounds, and who are keen to share their skills, knowledge and experiences with others.
In fact Rex's understanding of the government sector has come into play on multiple occassions where we try to find where services 'fit' and determine who their parent bodies are. Rex takes on updating projects from outdated listings to food assistance, helps the new volunteers with their telephone techniques and provides a refreshing dose of realism and humour alongside chocolate milk (and Lindt chocolate) Thanks Rex.
Samantha Agius
Samantha joined Connecting Up on 17 November 2017, as part of a joint partnership with Tea Tree Gully Council. She has a Bachelor of Arts with a major in music studies and minor in Marketing, a Bachelor of Natural Resource Management both from the University of Adelaide, as well as a Vocational Graduate Diploma of Spatial Information Services from TAFE SA amongst other qualifications.
Sam has volunteered across numerous organisations such as the Red Cross Society and Wilderness Society. Samantha began onsite and is now a dedicated offsite volunteer, committing time every week to updating our many SAcommunity listings, ensuring the community has access to up-to-date information across a range of services.
Samantha's skills, knowledge and understanding of records, data and data updates and importance of accuracy means that she doesn't miss any correction. Her attention to detail is exemplary and there isn't an edit or email that Sam hasn't seen and evaluated, she keeps our coordinator informed and is ever responsive in checking, appraising and maintaining information which is very welcome for the directory, the coordinator and the people that need it. Thank you Sam.
Stathis Avramis
Stathis has volunteered with us every week since early 2 March 2018, bringing with him a background and qualifications in IT and Library and Information Management. He enjoys volunteering with SAcommunity as a practical means of giving back to the community. Recently, Stathis has been undertaking data analysis for councils using visualisation tech tools Power Bi and Canva, to display community service data and demand in various councils. This enables councils to identify and prioritize the services and facilities most valuable to the local communities they serve.
Stathis has been our impromptu IT, coding guru and problem-solver, creating pop-ups for new volunteers to help them access their day-to-day tools and finding out how to merge data for the data project to follow up from Niru, figuring out what is wrong with the PCs/programs, whether it's just us, permissions and/or at what point we have to call James and Cameron to help. He has jumped in to assist new volunteers with tech tools and software (and the coordinator) and then documented the volunteer training from areas such as resizing photos, email verification to Better Impact modules to the data project needs. Stathis also introduced us to good Turkish delight and now we can't go back to any other. Greatly appreciated Stathis!
Flavia
Flavia has been with us at Connecting up for more than three and a half years, coming from our partnership program with the City of Prospect on 12 September 2017. She has really enjoyed being back in the office in 2021, and had this to say about her volunteer experience in the past year:
"During the Covid shut down there was time to reflect on the last 3+ years of volunteering at Connecting Up with the SAcommunity program. I really enjoy keeping the listings current and especially chatting to community members.
Sometimes it’s hearing their good news such as increased memberships and special events. Other times it’s not such good news, such as clubs closing and other times the news is of the more regular changes of presidents, secretaries, locations or meeting times.
Every time it’s a chance to connect and have that information ready for the wider community for whenever they need.
Covid has changed the way we connect but it hasn’t stopped the importance of connecting. I hope our work helps make it easier. For me it’s what volunteering is all about, making life that bit easier."
There's not much Flavia doesn't know about her local Prospect council community, having volunteered, supported fundraisers and networked with people in all the groups across its length and breadth including with the council itself. She has been a boon to us to be 'on loan' from the council to update services and write about the area >>here.
Malcolm
Malcolm is our longest serving volunteer here at Connecting Up, having joined the team on 16 October 2013. Malcolm works offsite, volunteering for 15 hours each week (4,192 hours since mid-2015).which he spends tirelessly updating our many community service listings, ensuring the community has access to relevant and up-to-date information.
Malcolm doesn't like to make much of a fuss but it is his steady and error-free updating work that keeps the home fires burning at SAcommunity and allows us to try other projects to clean up the SAcommunity data and work on enhancing the program as a whole.
Malcolm is the one that notices any changes and contacts us to let us know if there are issues occurring with the database, or listing trends and interactions via the updates and emails. He takes on and trials our new listing changes, lets us know areas we haven't thought of and always ensures that he has his next series of listings to work on for the weekend shift. Malcolm is an SAcommunity rock, a volunteer foundation stone and we thank him for his continued and dedicated service.
Find our other volunteer stories below:
National Volunteer Week 17-23 May 2021: Our Volunteers 2
National Volunteer Week 17-23 May 2021: Our Volunteers 3
