Photo: Adelaide Parklands courtesy of J McIntyre

1 - 30 June 2020
What: SA Water's 2020 Community Partnerships Program 
Up to $10,000 in funding or in-kind support for local community groups
Who: SA Water
How: To apply visit sawater.com.au
Closes: 30 June 2020 

1 June 2020 (Step 2 easing of Covid-19 restrictions in SA)
What: SA Sports Vouchers Program

Image: Photo by Alyssa Ledesma on Unsplash

The South Australian Government’s Sports Vouchers Program continues to be available for all primary school students this year, despite the impacts of COVID-19 on sporting teams and clubs.

What: National Reconciliation Week (NRW)
About: "Building relationships and communities that value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, histories and cultures"
Who: Reconciliation SA Inc.
When: 27 May - 3 June
How: Visit Reconciliation SA to learn more, download education packs and lesson plans or register to take part in the two competitions during this week:

What: National Simultaneous Storytime
Who: ALIA - Australian Library and Information Association
About: Annual campaign to promote literacy and reading by young children through encouraging readers across the nation to read the same picture simultaneously
This Year's Book: This year’s book is Whitney and Britney Chicken Divas, written and illustrated by Lucinda Gifford, and published by Scholastic Australia. 
When: 11am AEST (10.30 in Adelaide) on 27 May 2020
Visit: http://www.alia.org.au/nss

What: Library and Information Week
Who: ALIA - Australian Library and Information Association
About: Annual celebration in the last week of May to recognise and acknowledge librarians and libraries and the range of services and vital role libraries play in our community 
When: 25 - 31 May 2020

This year's theme is 'Create' to showcase the ways librarians and information professionals create through their work and through supporting their patrons to create.

Photo: Cheryl Heitman, Erin, Sophie Hood, Nirupama Amarakoon, Farhana Razeen, offsite volunteer Brooke Lloyd (not pictured) 

The aim of Connecting Up's Volunteer Program is to support SAcommunity whilst simultaneously allowing our volunteers to see more clearly the skills they have and that they bring to us, by having a platform and forum where they can express their ideas for the service and demonstrate their talents together in a supportive team environment.

Our volunteers proactively use their abilities and those they learn from each other and share with us to support their local community in a meaningful way through the directory service.

Connecting Up has collated several photos of volunteers to highlight 'a day in the life' of our volunteers and look at the activities the team participate in.

Particularly with regards to skill-building with many of the photos of volunteers engaged in Telephone Techniques Training to practice talking with presidents, vice-presidents and secretaries of numerous community services over the phone. Each volunteer takes on the role of either the service or interviewer to ask questions in order to update service listings and information. Our more seasoned volunteers are paired with new volunteers to improve or build on those customer service skills needed for volunteering and also for future careers. 

Photo: Cheryl Heitman, Alexander Bull, David Webb, Flavia, Daniela Atanasova

Connecting Up Volunteers Wednesday Group
Every day, each volunteer group brings new and familiar faces, experiences, skills and backgrounds and new connections.

Many of the volunteers that join us on Wednesday are our long-term regular volunteers and it's with the help of our experienced SAcommunity team members that we are able to continue to induct, train and support new volunteers as well as maintain the directory, call and interview community services. We are only able to run our volunteer program because of their steadfast contribution to the whole team.  Thank you. 

Cheryl

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

Pictured (L - R): Lan Pham, Erin, Anmoldeep (back), Samantha Whillas, Audrey Menz, Farhana Razeen, Niru Amarakoon. Our team took this photo on 3 March 2020 before our volunteer program moved to Working From Home (WFH). 

Meet our Tuesday Connecting Up Volunteers (and our Intern)
How time flies, we took this photo of our Tuesday Volunteer group a short time back on 3 March 2020 before our program transitioned to working from home using remote tools.