On Friday 25 March 2022 representatives from Uniting attended the 2021 Volunteering Awards (Victoria) at Government House hosted by the Governor of Victoria, the Hon Linda Dessau AC and Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers Mr Anthony Carbines.
Uniting was announced as a finalist and had great honour of being named runners up for the COVID 19 Resilience Award.
The award was judged on how we undertook activities to overcome COVID-19 challenges, whilst maintaining high quality services, and implementing strategies to support volunteers to be resilient and adapt to the requirements of COVID-19 public health orders.
Being announced as a finalist and then runners up is a recognition of both the central systems and support we have in place, as well as the local leadership and engagement between volunteer leaders and teams.
The generosity of volunteer’s response during the COVID crisis can only be described as overwhelming. We are proud to say there were 2,467 active volunteers across all service streams of Uniting at the height of the pandemic and restrictions. This meant that even with COVID restrictions approximately 85% of Uniting volunteers remained active and engaged.
At Uniting volunteers are invaluable and vital to our success. This past year volunteers:
- contributed more than 1.3 million hours of service
- answered 72,500 calls to Lifeline
- delivered 67,00 meals to people in need
- provided 48,100 food parcels and vouchers for people in crisis
- made over 8,000 welfare calls to older people
- 360 foster carers provided their home for vulnerable children
Please get in touch if you are interested in becoming a Uniting volunteer.
