By Callum Ludwig
Volunteers groups from Melbourne’s east and beyond came together on Wednesday 1 May for the inaugural EV Strengthening Communities Inclusive Volunteering Awards.
The event aimed to acknowledge and recognise the efforts of local community groups, including a few in the Outer East, in encouraging people of all backgrounds, ages and abilities to volunteer.
CEO of EV Strengthening Communities Viv Cunningham-Smith was the MC for the event and said they want the community groups to share their expertise on inclusive volunteering with each other.
“Through Volunteering Victoria funding, we were funded to break down barriers to volunteering for initially three priority groups; people with disabilities, First Nations people and newly-arrived migrants, and now we have some additional groups; young people, vulnerable women and the unemployed,” she said.
“The focus of the work is you, the organisations who are offering volunteering opportunities and who are delivering vital services through volunteers, whether you are solely a volunteer workforce or you have a mix of volunteer and paid workforces,”
“Those that met 80 per cent of the criteria and above were deemed to achieve an inclusive volunteer workplace, but those who didn’t are still committed and on that journey of working towards an inclusive volunteering workplace and we celebrate and wish to recognise all of that work today.”
28 volunteer organisations were nominated for their efforts, either set to receive an award or an acknowledgement for their efforts in providing an inclusive volunteering opportunity.
The award recipients were:
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Baptcare, Feed One Feed All, Foothills Community Care Inc, the Melbourne AMEP Volunteer Tutor Scheme, the Newhope Baptist Church, Puffing Billy Railway and Wellways Australia.
The organisations that were acknowledged for their inclusivity efforts were:
Living and Learning at Ajani Inc, Maroondah Winter Shelter, MiCare Ltd, Mountain District Radio Inc 3MDR, Carenet, MVC Boxing, Yarra Ranges Council TAC L2P Program, Ferntree Gully Tennis Club, Community First Responders Foundation Ltd, Temple Society Australia- CHAMPION Community Hub, Manningham Walking Group For Carers, Mooroolbark Community Garden, Ringwood Church of Christ, Community Support Knox, Yarra Ranges and Surrounds, Neuma Church, Benwerren, Melbourne All-Abilities Lions Club, The Boroondara Family Network, Australia Chin Community (Eastern Melbourne) Inc, Women Support Incorporated and Middle Ground Cafe.
Keynote speaker AJ Kulatunga came to speak about the ‘superpower’ and challenges of cultural diversity and said he was aware he was speaking to the converted but hoped to help flip the script and amplify what the organisations are already doing and take it out into the rest of the world.
Mr Kulatunga told two stories of a similar experience he had; once in a takeaway store where he was mistaken for an UberEats driver and another 10 years ago, where he had been told to ‘dress up a bit more’ so he didn’t ‘look like a taxi driver’ but an established professional speaker at his first professional speaker conference.
Mr Kulatunga said these incidents had gotten him thinking about how some of the challenges that he’d had in his career maybe weren’t always related to his competency.
“So looked into what is Australia comprised of, we’ve got 25.8 million people, 22.3 per cent speak a language other than English at home, which gives us around 5.7 million culturally diverse people and then we look at the workforce, we’ve got 14.2 million people in it and when you apply the percentages, it works out to about 3.1 million culturally diverse professionals,” he said.
“I didn’t quite understand why I wasn’t seeing people who looked like me on stage.”
Mr Kulatunga pulled up images of the lineups or boards at a number of speaking conferences and events, highlighting the ‘sea of sameness’ in the people on screen and while they are all experts in their field, were clearly lacking diversity.
Mr Kulatunga said one or more people have a decision to make in a very acute moment of space and time, which he calls the point of impact, people make a decision based on their identity.
“Our identity drives our thoughts and drives our actions and our identity is influenced by stories and lived experiences, occasionally you will create a great story that becomes a lived experience because you’re there with the people sharing the story,” he said.
“This is why it’s so important that we learn how to tell better stories, strategic storytelling is so important for all of us here if we really want to drive inclusivity and change instead of trying to throw information, data or facts at people,”
“If you influence a person’s lived experiences, magical things happen, if you influence a person’s stories, magical things happen.”
Six of the award-winning organisations, including the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Baptcare and Feed One Feed All, were also invited on stage after the awards to give a presentation on how they achieve inclusivity in their organisations.
