Farewell Volunteer Cheryl

This month of May, our wonderful, long-serving volunteer, Cheryl, announced to the team at Connecting Up that she would be retiring from voluntary work. Connecting Up would like to thank Cheryl for her hard work and dedication over the years, and celebrate her achievements with the organisation, her last day was 14 July 2022.   

Cheryl joined the Volunteer team at Connecting Up in August of 2014. She came to us from a background in front-line reception and administration, having worked many years in the government sector. This customer service experience she brought to the team has been an invaluable asset to our organisation during her time here.   

During her time at Connecting Up, Cheryl specialised in telephone techniques, becoming our very own telephone warrior! She reached out to thousands of organisations, many over the phone, in order to collect vital information about their services. Over the seven years that she volunteered at Connecting up, Cheryl completed over 3500 updates to the SAcommunity database. Many of these were difficult records, the contact information for which had expired or changed, and thus required extra work to track down and reach out to relevant personnel. We applaud her dedication and perseverance shown to have been able to achieve such results, often working with some of our most challenging listings!   

Image: Sarah Rayner-Fry, Customer Support Coordinator was a staff mentor for volunteer Cheryl and they met several times to discuss their shared customer experience backgrounds 

Cheryl also took on the mantle of training countless of our volunteers in the art of telephone techniques while a part of Connecting Up. Always willing to share her many years of experience with others, she has hosted many valuable lessons and training sessions for both our new volunteers, and refreshers for some more established team members. This has been an incredibly valuable learning opportunity for many of the members of Connecting Up's volunteer team, and they are very thankful for all Cheryl's time spent passing on her methods and expertise. So valuable, in fact, that Cheryl has kindly agreed to drop in from time to time to undertake some telephone techniques training sessions for new volunteers in her retirement!

Cheryl will be fondly remembered by volunteers and staff alike for her open, friendly and generous nature, and for the experience and skills she has passed down to dozens of volunteers throughout her time here. We thank her for her outstanding service – her regular presence will be sorely missed by the team, but we are thankful for all the moments from the last seven years she has spent with us. We wish her all the best for the future!