Welcome to National Volunteer Week

Dear Volunteers,

This is the week for you. it's all about you and in celebration of everything you do as a volunteer. We wish to celebrate and thank you.

This years theme is "The Change Makers", so this week especially we celebrate the difference each and every volunteer makes to our community.

The American Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once observed: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Across Australia, every single day, some 6 million people volunteer their services to make life a little bit better for someone else. And that number only refers to those officially registered as volunteers. It doesn’t include those who regularly engage in acts of kindness and assistance to their families, friends, neighbours, colleagues and the strangers that they bump into every day.

There is an enormous force for good in our world, carried in the hearts of so many who know, intuitively and reflexively, that happiness lies not in grasping something for themselves but in offering something of themselves to others. Volunteers so often bring hope to us all and remind us that goodness prevails in a world in which bad news can often seem to dominate the headlines.

let me express a big thank you to all our volunteers, whose gratuitous kindness is a constant inspiration and a reminder of the remarkable things that can be achieved.

Happy Volunteer Week from Carolyn.