National Volunteers Week 2007

May 14th is the start of National Volunteer Week 2007. The focus for organisations like Bellarine Community Health Inc is on recruiting new volunteers and on promoting the value of volunteering in the community.

We are fortunate to have a steady stream of volunteer enquiries every month, with many members of the community keen to join the organisation and become part of our team of volunteers. This is both welcomed and appreciated.

We have training days for new and existing volunteers scheduled for Thursday 7 June at Queenscliffe Community Health Centre and Wednesday 8 August at Ann Nichol House. The focus is on providing some basic training for our volunteers in areas such as Confidentiality, Occupational Health and Safety, Safe food Handling, Manual Handling and Back Care and Infection Control. We are fortunate of course to have qualified and experienced staff members able to facilitate these sessions. As proof of how important we consider this induction, our CEO John Fendyk takes a session elaborating on the values and mission of Bellarine Community Health.

We value the contribution made by our existing volunteers, and we look forward to meeting new volunteers and bringing them on board. Our volunteers are crucial to the smooth running of our service. We believe that in providing an induction day, volunteers can gain some basic training, have the opportunity to meet with staff and ask questions, and to bond with fellow volunteers.

At the end of each training day, participants are asked to fill in an evaluation form dealing with both the content and the presentation of each session. With this information we can then aim to make any necessary improvements to the training and try to keep it relevant for our volunteers.

For further information please call Elizabeth Hopkin on 5258 0853.

Elizabeth Hopkin Co-ordinator of Volunteers Bellarine Community Health Inc.