In addition to the management team of four (Mollie Striglioni, Sue Steedman, Suzanne Kuntz and Dick Boyd), we have a fantastic team of over 40 volunteers – all of whom work for us at least one day each week, making them very familiar to our visitors.
And whilst you may think of Our Place as a “local” organisation, we attract visitors, like our volunteers, from all over Sydney (and beyond). We have had visitors from Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle, Wollongong and rural NSW. And our volunteers come from nearly as far afield. Here is a list of the suburbs they hail from: Alexandria, Ashfield, Balmain, Boronia Park, Camperdown, Caringbah, Carlingford, Erskineville,Gordon, Greenacre, Kensington, Killara, Lindfield, Longueville, Marrickville, Mosman, Naremburn, Newtown, Padstow, Petersham, Redfern, Rockdale, Sans Souci, Strathfield, Surry Hills and Sydenham.
The skills these volunteers bring to our organisation on a daily basis are invaluable. We have great cooks; qualified counsellors; legal, psychology and social work students; registered nurses; an sitting municipal councillor; an experienced mental health worker; a trained lifeline phone counsellor; a trained drug and alcohol counsellor, a retired doctor, a retired headmaster, people with various commercial backgrounds and a social policy consultant. Put that together with the four management committee members who have over twenty years combined experience in the welfare sector, and various business, management and communication skills and we have a very formidable team indeed.
Of course, the greatest skill our volunteers can offer our visitors is compassion: good, kind listeners are very important, as are people who don’t judge, who enjoy a laugh, who will have a game of cards and who take everyone at face value.
"All of our volunteers care – that’s their greatest talent. It doesn’t require any special qualifications to be kind. And these people really get into your heart – so it’s not hard." (Mollie)
And we simply couldn’t operate Our Place without our volunteers.
If you think you might be interested in volunteering at Our Place, please email Suzanne Kuntz at: Suzanne@ourplace.org.au or call 9516 1002 and leave a message. You can come and meet the team, have a chat, and see if it’s for you. Skilled volunteers experienced in the welfare or health sectors are particularly welcome. We sometimes need volunteers to cover events or absences, so we don’t always need a permanent commitment.