Lauren Stocker celebrates 100 years of volunteering

It's my absolute privilege today to talk about the role of volunteers across the Smith family's 100 year history. Right from the beginning, volunteers have been part of the fabric of what makes this organisation not just great, but fabulous.

We often talk about volunteers being the backbone of The Smith Family, and they really are. Without them, much of the work that we do with our Learning for Life families and students wouldn't be possible, and certainly not to the scale or with the efficiency to which we operate today.

We have certainly changed over the years and evolved from that welfare model to education. But the one thing that's remained the same and really constant has been the involvement of our fabulous volunteers.

I am going to do a really quick speed through history. During the 1920s and 30s most of our family and relief work was done by members and volunteers. In 1924 we had 400 volunteer drivers who responded to a call out for people to help us to deliver gifts at Christmas. During the depression, members and volunteers donated their time to deliver donated food and clothing at night and during the weekends to respond to families in need.

Around World War Two We had a ladies auxiliary who were volunteers who regularly raised money by distributing money boxes to households around, particularly NSW, for the collection of coins for the Smith family.

In the late 60s, we had volunteer visitors who were recruited to visit people who were lonely and isolated. Then in the 70s, you heard Doug mention earlier, we saw the development of what became an award winning volunteer-based program, which was Each One Teach One, later known as the Home Tutor scheme which was established to help immigrant and refugee women to learn basic English by linking them with volunteer tutors.

Fast forward then, to the 90s and the early 2000s. We saw new volunteering opportunities emerge, including really notably the retail and commercial enterprise that up until really recently was supported by several hundred really committed volunteers working in particularly the retail stores, but also in the administration part of that commercial enterprise.

That of course brings us to today, with our focus firmly in education.

And as we've heard, and as you hopefully know, we have over 8,000 volunteers supporting us, together with more than 15,000 members of View Clubs around Australia.

Some of the roles that we have hark back to our history, and we still do Christmas volunteering. Certainly, this year, of course, in very different ways.

But we've seen the emergence of other volunteering roles. As you know, lots of tutoring and mentoring roles as well as sophisticated skilled volunteering and, more recently, virtual volunteering – many of our roles involving our corporate and philanthropic partners.

There's lots of reasons why people come to The Smith Family. It might be a pathway to employment, it might be to expand their social network, or it might be for the support of a young person. And people sometimes come to us to give the support that they themselves wanted to receive when they were a young person.

I once heard a lecturer in the volunteering sector say that there's a stirring in all of us to help other humans that we see in need. That it's a really, really innate stirring, that we're being intrinsically driven to want, to practically help those that we see suffering or in need,

I think The Smith Family’s volunteers bring that stirring into action and we are so, so lucky that we have so many, literally thousands of people who choose this organisation to donate their time and energy to and to support our vision and mission. The impact that we see is huge. It's obviously, this generous gift of time and talent to help us do more.

But our volunteers also bring great heart to this organization.

Something that we've dug up in recent weeks, in looking through the archives, is a fantastic booklet about the Smith family from 1924, which appeals to readers to live for the community. And there's a great line in it which says, this is not a family of Smiths by birth, but by adoption. Anyone can be a Smith if he has the Smith spirit of fellowship and friendship. And I absolutely love that.

I think that all of us here have had that experience of having our working lives enriched by the wonderful friendship and the times of fellowship that we share by having volunteers work alongside us day-to-day.

So, on that note, this is a birthday party, right? I feel like I'm missing out on some of the celebrations and balloons, but what I'd like to end on is three cheers for 100 years of our of our fabulous volunteers.

So I'm going to ask you to join me in that in three cheers. I'm going to do the hip-hips, you're going to join me in the hoorays.

I can't hear most of you unless you can take everyone off mute, Mel, but I'll lead us in three cheers for our wonderful volunteers.

Ready? Hip-hip, hooray. Hip-hip, hooray. Hip-hip, hooray.

Thank you everyone. Thanks so much for joining me in that. Here's to a century of volunteers and to each one of those people.

Thank you for being a Smith.